May 17, 1988 | Just as a single swallow does not a summer make, two terrific movies from the same country don’t necessarily signal another national renaissance of cinema. Still, it’s difficult not to feel upbeat about the current state of Australian films, given the quality of two recent imports: Travelling North, which opened in Houston last week, and High Tide, which starts today at the Greenway 3 Theatre.
Starring Judy Davis and directed by Gillian Armstrong, who last collaborated on the memorable My Brilliant Career, High Tide is a deeply felt and profoundly moving drama. It draws the audience in slowly, insinuatingly, never pressing too hard or resorting to easy melodrama. Indeed, this compelling film works its magic so stealthily, it captures your heart before you have a chance to resist.
Davis, who has never before looked so beautifully ravaged, plays Lili, a hard-drinking back-up singer for one of the world’s worst Elvis impersonators, on a tour of Australia’s most remote cities. Lili has a smart mouth and a thick skin — when she’s fired for insubordination by the ersatz Elvis, she doesn’t seem terribly hurt, or even surprised. But, then again, maybe she just doesn’t want to give her ex-boss the satisfaction of an overtly emotional response.
In any case, Lili is abandoned with a broken car in a secluded seaside community. She checks into a second-rate trailer park, and checks out the local employment opportunities. She’s offered a gig as a stripper for some private parties, not exactly her regular line of work. But, hey, she’s got to pay her garage bill before she can leave town. And even though Lili never comes out and says it, you get the impression this isn’t the first time she’s had to swallow her pride to make a few quick bucks.
Back at the trailer park, Lili strikes up a casual friendship with a neighbor, Ally (Claudia Karvan), a teen-age girl who lives with her grandmother. Then Lili meets the grandmother, and gets a rude shock: The woman is her former mother-in-law. And the girl is Lili’s daughter, the child she abandoned years ago after her husband’s death. A child, it should be noted, who thinks her mother is long dead.
In synopsis, it sounds like the stuff of a routine made-for-TV feature. But High Tide takes the high ground, never settling for the banal. The screenplay by Laura Jones is richly textured and emotionally complex, with characters who define themselves through their intriguing contradictions and idiosyncrasies.
For example: In a lesser film, Lili’s mother-in-law, Bet, would come off as a tight-faced, moralizing biddy who represents life-denying convention. But as written by Jones, and as vibrantly played by Jan Adele, Bet is a hearty, even lusty woman who wants only what is best for Ally. Even Lili has to admire, albeit grudgingly, Bet’s maternal instinct.
Davis plays Lili with meticulously calibrated measures of wary cynicism, weary self-disgust, and wan vulnerability. She reveals a lot about the character in Lili’s scenes with Mick, a local fisherman played by Davis’ real-life husband, Colin Friels. Lili warms to the fellow, much to her surprise and very much to fulfill an emotional hunger. But when they have sex, she behaves like someone reluctantly granting a favor. (She doesn’t want to bother with a lot of foreplay, and she doesn’t care to take her shirt off.) And when Mick wants to turn their relationship into a commitment, Lili’s first impulse is to look for the nearest exit.
Davis eloquently expresses each shift in Lili’s emotional makeup, even when Lili is most tongue-tied. Long after the movie ends, you will remember her nervous laughter as Lili impulsively attempts to vamp a mechanic, then recognizes her own humiliation, then self-consciously retreats from the garage. As Ally, newcomer Claudia Karvan is almost Davis’ equal, conveying hope and trepidation in a single glance. Their scenes together are delicately balanced on the knife-edge of heartbreak.
As a director, Armstrong is subtle: Lili strips for two different parties, but we only see a brief part of one performance, and then just enough to make a dramatic point. (A male director might have felt compelled to bare a bit more skin — for purely artistic reasons, no doubt.) But Armstrong isn’t shy about playing the human drama for maximum suspense.
For a long time, we are never quite sure when, or even if, Lili will reveal herself to Ally. In fact, the way Armstrong sets up the conflict, we are not even sure if Lili should reveal herself. And at the very end, Armstrong really tightens the screws, testing Lili’s bravery in a sequence that will bring a tear to the eye of anyone with a heart.
Beautifully filmed by Russell Boyd, whose fluidly mobile camera enhances and intensifies many scenes, High Tide is a masterwork. Immerse yourself in it, and savor each moment.
