HIGH TIDE (director: Gillian Armstrong; screenwriter: Laura Jones; cinematographer: Russell Boyd; editor: Nicholas Beauman; cast: Judy Davis (Lilli), Jan Adele (Bet), Claudia Karvan (Ally), Colin Friels (Mick, fisherman/artist boyfriend of Lili), John Clayton (Col, Bet's Boyfriend), Frankie J Holden (Lester, Elvis Lookalike), 'Cowboy' Bob Purtell (Country Joe), Barry Rugless (Club Manager); Runtime: 102; Polygram/ Hemdale Films; 1988-Australia)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An emotionally gripping woman's pic about a woman accidently discovering her past. This is an unsentimental and marvelously acted family drama, set in a backwater dumpy Australian seacoast town. The script by Laura Jones is intelligent and pertinent, the woman director Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career) has made a nearly flawless film, and the three lead actresses draw out their complicated characters in ways that touch the heart with the mark of unbridled reality.
Lilli (Judy Davis) is one of a trio of backup singers for an Elvis impersonator act, who all wear blonde mophead wigs and jump suits. She has gotten under Elvis' skin with her disdainful attitude for his sleazy act, and he fires her after the last stop of the tour in a remote town on the coast of New South Wales. When her car breaks down and cost $600 bucks to fix and she has to wait for the parts to come from the big city, she rents a caravan in a nearby trailer park.
By coincidence, when drunk on the floor of the trailer park' communal bathroom she's helped to her feet by the teenaged daughter she hasn't seen since she was a baby. She doesn't realize that's her daughter, but the next day she spots her mother-in-law, Bet (Jan Adele), who hates her and never forgave her for deserting her daughter after her surfer husband died. She has raised the kid, telling her both parents were dead, and makes it clear that she's not welcome here now. Bet supports herself by working in a fish factory, driving during the summer an ice cream truck, and occasionally singing on weekends at the local club. Ally never questioned that both parents were dead, but wonders what they were like. Her only ambition is to be a surfer like her father.
The mother's maternal instincts return, as she's curious about her daughter and goes out of her way to meet her. This makes Bet very hostile toward her, who is anxious for her to get her car fixed and be gone before on a whim she might decide to take her daughter with her. But Lilli doesn't have the money to pay for the car, and is forced to take a job on the weekend stripping at the local club.
In the meantime she has already met a boyfriend, Mick (Colin Friels), whose wife deserted him taking with her their son but leaving him with their daughter. He's a fisherman and an artist, not making much money but with ambitions to get a chartered fishing business going and get Lilli to marry him and raise a family. This kind of normalcy freaks her out and she leaves him after their brief stop at a motel away from the town, but in a moment of intimate bedroom conversation has told him that girl she was with is her daughter.
When he runs into Ally in a store, he tells her that woman she had dinner with last night was her mother.
The mother has to now face herself and what she did, as the film presents an interesting dilemma. It is not usually the mother who deserts the child, but in this case Lilli must come to terms with the nomadic, adventurious life she has been leading. She concludes that she was a coward in running away, that she never really grew up, and has been selfish thinking only of herself.
The film doesn't flinch and tells the story without leaving a way out for any of the parties involved. It shows that a mother doesn't have to be perfect, she can have flaws as almost all do, but there's something about a child being raised by her real mother that means so much to both. There are no easy answers given here, what the film does best is concentrate on how this accidental meeting has a devastating effect on all three lives and it does it in a fresh way.
Warning: spoiler to follow.
Judy Davis is one of the best actresses around today, and her performance is powerful. She makes her character a complicated one, who has more to say about her fragile self than about becoming a stronger woman. She lets us see that she's not really happy being a free spirit but someone who has run away from herself and has never wanted to look at herself with clarity before, preferring to brood and think she's superior to others because of her lifestyle as a drifter. Claudia Karvan expresses what every kid who has been abandoned yearns to know. While, Jan Adele, playing the part of her grandmother who raised her as if she was her own daughter, but who is also a flawed woman but someone who was there when her granddaughter needed her the most. That she raises the kid with love, but in an environment that is stifling adds to the dilemma.
This is just a brilliant film, my only quibble with it is a minor one. When mother and daughter drive away together, there was an unnecessary emotionally charged scene showing the mother thinking of abandoning her child again as the daughter sat alone in the restaurant. Only a real stinker would have done that, and we already determined she was more confused than she was an evil woman and therefore we didn't need that scene to know how conflicted she was in having her daughter with her. The point made was that she never came looking for her child and would have left without telling her if her car was ready. It took a chance meeting to bring them back together and hopefully it will bring them closer together and add more meaning to both their lives.
REVIEWED ON 9/18/2001 GRADE: A
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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