peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2022 05 10 BeneathClouds

Beneath Clouds (2002)

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Ivan Sen's debut feature; apparently an elaboration of his short Tears from 1998. It opens with some great cinematography (by Allan Collins) of the B-doubles and grain silos out past Moree. Two school girls seem to be waiting for the bus opposite the only shop for miles, where the boys loiter. One (Dannielle Hall) is clearly slated for an exit. Down the track she meets up with escapee Damian Pitt who had been working on the Christmas conifers at a prison farm near Lithgow. Neither went on with the acting. The story goes as it must with some predictably telling encounters. Sen leans heavily on motif and a late 1990s electronic soundtrack of his own devising. You can see why his next stop was Toomelah. I enjoyed it and would say this was his best effort thus far.

Loads of details and reviews at Ozmovies. Four-and-a-half stars from Margaret, four from David. Many reviews fend off claims of special pleading for Australian movies, and most do not grasp that Sen was reaching for a kind of affected, telling yet fake realism ala Hal Hartley through the cinematography and mannered dialogue of the untutored actors.