Director Robert Connolly follows 'The Dry' with a story of two generations of eco-activists, highlighted by magnificent underwater footage.
Following in the footsteps of the international hit "The Dry", veteran Australian director Robert Connelly has tackled another local literary adaptation in "Blueback", based on the 1997 novel by his celebrated compatriot Tim Winton. That slim tome was aimed primarily at younger readers. The film takes on a slightly more adult, realistic, and less parabolic tenor, though its eco-minded narrative remains a bit incomplete for the film's treatment, resulting in an enjoyable, very cool-looking film with little impact. dramatic.
Director: Robert Connolly
Writers: Robert Connolly, Tim Winton
Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Radha Mitchell, Eric Bana
Nonetheless, it has more than enough significant advantages to offer, from an attractive cast headlined by Mia Wasikowska and Radha Mitchell to some spectacularly engaging underwater photography. Having already played a few other festivals before its Sundance run (and opened commercially in some territories), it's scheduled for a theatrical release in the US by Quiver Distribution on February 24, with VOD following on April 21.
Abby Jackson (Wasikowska) is a marine biologist who works in a marine laboratory, her diving skills are useful for measuring the health of life on the ocean floor. That job is interrupted when a call reports that her mother Dora hers (Elizabeth Alexander) has suffered a stroke. She flies home to Western Australia and takes a dazed and mute Dora out of a care facility, hoping that her familiar surroundings will help her regain her speech and memory.
All of this certainly triggers Abby's own memories, which take up most of the running time here in chronologically ordered flashbacks. They begin with her eighth birthday, when (played by Ariel Donoghue) 30-year-old Dora (Mitchell) deems her old enough to venture scuba diving in "the deepest part of the bay." The girl is skittish at first, then exhilarated, particularly after the thrill of encountering a groping blue giant, roughly twice her size.
She is initially alarmed when the fish snatches an abalone from her hand. Then she, curious, she feeds him another with her hand. She calls her doe-eyed, big-lipped new friend "Blueback," and promises her mother that she will keep this discovery a secret, lest she be targeted by poachers who frequent these waters. .
This illegal fishing is a major concern for Dora, who isn't afraid to take on those who catch protected species, or the local tycoon (Erik Thomson) who pressures her to make way for a luxury development. She passes on those environmental activist values to her daughter, though as an average teenager (then played by Ilsa Fogg) with other interests, Abby sometimes incurs the wrath of her strong-willed and hot-tempered mother. Among those interests are the cute classmate Briggs (Pedrea Jackson, with Clarence Ryan as the adult version), as well as the activities of the disreputable, drunk but harmless fisherman Macka, who provides a partial surrogate for the father who died when Abby was a baby.
Connolly's script (with Winton credited for "additional writing") expands on and alters several aspects of the source material, beginning with Abby, who in the book is a boy named Abel. The flashback structure is workable enough, but if little is happening in the present time (as our heroine tries to restore her grieving mother's sense of self), then not enough is happening in the past either. Well-cast subsidiary figures don't get much character development, while the conflicts that are in episodic progression fizzle out rather quickly. “Blueback” underscores its own indifference to dramatic urgency by having the three significant deaths of the narrative happen offscreen. It also feels a bit vague on the tenor, and is likely to strike adult viewers as innocuous and stripped-down, but with a bit of too-adult psychological discord to charm the under-12s, despite its spot on the show. Sundance's Kids program.
Even so, it's all worked out easily, with editor Nick Meyers' pacing never slacking despite an overall laid-back vibe. Cinematographer Andrew Commis' widescreen photography of Bremer Bay and the surrounding Greater South Region locales is attractive enough, but secondary to the real treat here: numerous sequences of aquatic life shot by the lead underwater cinematographer Rick Rifici and four others.
Watch Blueback 2023 Movie Trailer
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