Customer Reviews

High Tide [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The premise of a film involving a character who is a backup singer to an Elvis impersonator...in Australia....well it's too tempting.
While I was expecting a comedy, (how could it not be?), I found instead a nicely developed drama about a woman who gives her daughter up to adoptionand later comes across her by accident. The plot moves along with a few twists as we learn more about the circumstances of the mother and the daughter.
A bittersweet film that slowly grabs your attention and refuses to let go. The filming in Australia is understated and much of it takes place in a travel trailer/mobile home park along the beach.
Overall one of the best films I have seen. Highly recomended!

This film reunites Australians director Gillian Armstrong and Judy Davis, after their 1979 My Brilliant Career, which brought them both world-wide attention. Here Davis plays Lilli, who chances across the teenage daughter she has abandoned, living in a coastal caravan park. The music of Peter Best with it's use of accordian, suggests both the sea, and Lilli's melancholy. Writer Laura Jones had initially devised the parent as a man, but by changing him to a her, the treatment becomes more complicated and far more interesting. Lilli is a gothic, dressing in black and with a lion's mane of hair, and her presence in this conservative environment is as if she is from outer space. When we see Lilli drunkenly walking on the beach in a wonderfully poetic tracking shot, it's hard to decide which is more striking - the coastline or Lilli. The irony that places with open countryside and big skies being emotionally bleak is not lost on Armstrong, whose use of speedi-cam represents Lilli's restless nature. Armstrong has always been a subtle director, with a keen eye for detail, and her direction here is superb. The framing is exact, and no scenes seem unnecessary. The few musical numbers she stages also recall her musical Starstruck in their sound quality. Even when Lilli is forced to perform a nightclub strip to earn money, Armstrong's use of music, and the focus on Lilli's humiliation, covers the fact that Davis isn't the stripper type. Jones overstates her case when she has Lilli say that she realises she is a coward, since we have already realised that from Davis, in the way she reacts to Jan Adele as Bet, the mother of her deceased husband, who has been raising the daughter. Armstrong seems to want us to embrace Adele as a lifeforce, but when she chases after Davis when threatened by her presence, it is more Lilli we identify with. Perhaps this is partly due to Adele's limited range, or partly because Lilli wins us over when we see her sobbing in a toilet cubicle, half in sadness and half in joy over her discovery. As a man Lilli befriends, Colin Friels doesn't have much to do, and I think his character is perhaps the weakest part of Jones' screenplay. He and Davis seem to become intimates overnight (or is it that real life husband and wife have an instinctive ease together?), and the idea of he having been adandoned by his wife and left with his own daughter, seems a bit too symmetrical. As Lilli's daughter, Ally, Claudia Karvan has a likeable directness and she plays off Davis well. In a way, the film is more her story than Lilli's. The way Armstrong and Jones end this film is quite remarkeable. Lilli is given a shocking opportunity. Will she repeat the past?

I'm surprised this film isn't better known in the United States. It's a small-scale film, set in a small town, but it's possibly one of the best Autralian films ever made. It achieves exactly what it sets out to - it takes us into its characters' lives, and it reminds us of our humanity.

It's such a startlingly real film - emotionally as well as in style - that perhaps it's a bit raw for some people. But it has one of Judy Davis's best performances, and it may be Gillian Armstrong's best film.

There's not much point in relaying the plot - it has one, but it's not a plot-driven film. The drama is emotional.

"High Tide" deserves to be much better known, so make the effort to track it down, and tell your friends about it.

While clichéd in basic story, and contrived in premise (back-up singer and
overall mess is fired from tour, ends up in same trailer park with daughter
she abandoned years ago to her mother-in-law, now is drawn slowly
into wanting to reconnect), the execution raises it to a higher level, especially Judy
Davis's great performance.

Complex, abrasive, heartbreaking she makes the story come to life.

I'd love to see a better copy, because a lot of reviews praise the cinematography, but in 4:3
on vhs transfer, it's hard to appreciate that element.

Also, it ends on an unfortunately false, forced beat,

Full of interesting specifics and details, this quiet, muted story is lovely, if not amazing.
I'd like to see it again, especially in a good, widescreen copy.