Australians impress

Press, 2 June 1982, Page 23

Australians impress

NZPA '.T London Australia unquestionably made the greatest impact of national? cinemas at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, says film critic David Robinson, of .“The Times." “In Continuous screenings the country’s entire year’s output Jof 25 films were shown to prove that the Australian miracle is no flash, in, the-pan,” he wrote. Robinson predicted that the collection’s major showpiece, |!‘We of the Never Never,” would overtake the success of “My Brilliant Career” and “The Getting of Wisdom?’ “Igor/ Auzins, making his first cinema feature film, uses the epic landscape and the astonishing acting gifts of the Aboriginals to thrilling effect,-’ he said. Adams-Packer production is adapted from the, 1908 ’ classic of Australian, literature, Aeneas “Jeannie” . Gunn’s recollections of life as the manager of a remote

Northern Territory cattle station. Robinsop also praised the performance of actress Angela Punch McGregor, as Mrs Gunn, saying her performance captured . “the courage and gentle determination of this unwilling feminist.”. Of other Australian films, Robinson wrote: Adams-Packer’s "Fighting Back,” . sensitively directed by Michael Caulfield, adapts a piece of contemporary autobiography. John Embling’s "Tom” is the record of a teacher’s selfless efforts to reclaim the confidence and trust of a deeply' disturbed child, despite the incomprehension of his mother and the hostility of fellow-teachers with an old-fashioned faith in beating as the best remedy. Paul Cox’s “Lonely; Hearts” is a Touching, smallscale story of a shy, middleaged couple who overcome

obstacles and rooted fears to achieve companionship and love. Very different, but also very Australian in that only Australian idiom and humour could bring it off, David Stevens’s “The Clinic” is one not from the Adams-Packer stable. Situated somewhere between a Fred Wiseman documentary and shameless soapopera, it is' a cheerful account of a day’s work in a Melbourne venereal-disease clinic. It is rude, funny, kind and uplifted by an exemplary urge to instruct as well as' entertain. Stevens, who was co-writer on “Breaker Morant,” is also director of one episode of a four-part historical saga about the oppressions and resistance of Aboriginal women over a century and a half. “Woman of the Sun” is likely to be shown on British television.: ’-