Finding the Road
Review of 'Somersault'
Volume 5, Number 16
| April 20 - 26,
2006FILMSOMMERSAULTDirected
by Cate ShortlandMagnolia
PicturesOpens Apr.
21Landmark’s Sunshine
CinemaMagnolia
PicturesAbbie Cornich
as the 16-year old runaway Heidi in the award-winning Australian film,
“Somersault.”
Finding The Road
Aussie film portrays
a painful coming-of-age
storyBY SETH J.
BOOKEYWhen teenage
impulsiveness intersects with the discovery that sex gives you power, the
results can be a disaster. In the case of Heidi, a 16-year-old from Canberra,
the Australian capital, this combination proves explosive enough to make her run
off to Lake Jindabyne, a ski resort area, after coming on to her mother’s
live-in boyfriend in the first ten minutes of “Somersault.” As she
refers to the incident later, her mother “looked at me like she
didn’t know me anymore”—so devastating is the extent of her
new power.While very
much still a girl, Heidi’s a quick study. Seeing how her mother’s
boyfriend was more than willing to go after jailbait, she immediately finds a
one-night stand in Jindabyne to give herself a bed for the night. After two
unsuccessful come-ons, she winds up with Joe, who pays for a night at a motel.
She quickly convinces the motel owner, Irene, to let her stay. She winds up
renting a flat vacated by Irene’s incarcerated son, and she gets herself a
job at a BP mini-mart, and even makes a friend—almost—with Bianca,
her sullen
co-worker.People are
quick to judge Heidi. Bianca’s step-father, one of the men Heidi
propositioned early on, warns her away from the family, telling her she’s
“the wrong type of girl.” When Joe’s friends find out she is
working at the mini-mart, they laugh her off as unworthy of their company. But
there is a lot more to Heidi than meets these provincial
eyes.“Somersault”
is very much the story of surfaces and what’s underneath, and director
Cate Shortland is able to bring out this duality in her cinematography, thematic
development, and her cast. Shortland imbues her indoor shots with vivid colors,
while using either dull blues or near-blinding overexposures on many of the
outdoor shots, mirroring the harshness some of these characters are feeling. A
lot of the action in the film takes place at night though, and some of the most
magical shots of Heidi offset her lit against the darkness, with twinkling
snowflakes falling around
her.Heidi is far from
being a self-serving slut the description here might imply. She’s reeling
from her own misstep back home, yet keeping a girlish scrapbook and reciting
jump-rope rhymes to herself by day while making more mistakes at night. Things
come to a head one night when she almost winds up with two boys, and gets
evicted for wandering drunk and naked in Irene’s parking
lot.Joe, her
almost-boyfriend, is not all that sure of himself either, despite his wealthy
background. When pushed for a report on their status by Heidi, he gives her a
bullshit answer that prompts her to drink a whole dish of chili sauce as payment
for his standoffishness. In that one evening, Joe takes her home and cares for
her, goes to a party where he gets into a fight with a friend, and winds up
visiting Richard, a gay neighbor who is only back briefly to pack up his late
parents’ home. Joe feels an affinity toward Richard because they have
similar backgrounds, but Richard, who now lives in France, has seen the world,
whereas Joe has outgrown the only pond he
knows.“Somersault”
is all about intimacy, and how hard it is to sustain it. Heidi discovers that
just because someone’s willing to have sex with you doesn’t mean
you’re intimate with them. Joe, whom we almost always see with a drink or
a bottle in hand, begins to see the consequences of his withdrawn nature, and
that getting drunk is no way to hide from involvement with other
people.Shortland
underscores this flight from intimacy in several ways. Bianca’s brother,
Carl, has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism that leaves him
high-functioning but unable to read people’s emotions, or to control what
he might say to upset them. Ironically, many of the people in Jindabyne are a
lot like Carl. When Bianca suddenly rejects Heidi on Roy’s say so, we
don’t see the whole confrontation, but we do see Heidi hosing down the
mini-mart window while Bianca cries behind
it.We also learn that
the remnants of an old town are still there, under Lake Jindabyne, which was
created by artificial flooding. Shortland also uses handheld camera throughout
the movie, so expertly, that you often don’t realize she’s doing it,
creating a very up-close look at these uptight folks. And again, using vivid
colors and lighting helps set people apart, like a yellow, drained looking Heidi
against a pink
background.It’s
a shame that it’s taken two years for “Somersault” to finally
debut here, and it’s clear why it’s won so many awards since it
first premiered in 2004. Abbie Cornich as Heidi and Sam Worthington as Joe both
give outstanding performances. I wouldn’t be surprised if five years from
now, their names become as common as Kate Winslet’s and Russell
Crowe’s are
today.Gay City News
is published
byCommunity Media
LLC.Gay
City News | 487 Greenwich St., Suite 6A | New
York, NY 10013
Posted: Thu - April 20, 2006 at 07:07 PM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:04 PM
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