LIttle Fish

[rm]

I just saw Little Fish at BAm and it's very very good, and so terribly Australian -- they really do seem to have a film culture of talking about childhood or using childhood to talk about all sorts of other things. It's very interesting. It's all the first time I think I've seen regular old Australia on film since I was there, and it just really hit me, how far away it feels, and how severed I am (and maybe have to be) from this thing that's really important to me. Wonderfully made film, wonderfully acted film, very good score/soundtrack (the children singing Flame Trees!), but I must say, seeing Sam Neil and Hugo Weaving kiss really did make the world go slightly pear-shaped for me for a moment. Just... woah... okay. Heh.

The Q & A after was pretty lame, largely because it wasn't moderated (well it was, technically) and people felt they could only ask questions about the film (or ramble incoherently). Cate Blanchett seemed not wanting to be there (and who would after doing a matinee of Hedda?) and where her Kate Hepburn performance in the Aviator came from seemed really obvious. Hugo Weaving was gregarious in a way I didn't expect, and watching both his performance in this film and his demeanor in the Q&A made me marvel as this type casting he's wound up with -- cold and austere and a bit scary. He was just sort of goofy.