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| Somersault |
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  (9/10)
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Runtime: 106 |
| Public Rating: 7.74 (65 votes) |
Director: Cate Shortland |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: drama |
Year: 2004 |
| Writer(s): Cate Shortland |
| Distributor: Hopscotch (Aus) |
| Reviewed by: Avril Carruthers |
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Produced by Anthony Anderson & Jan Chapman
Starring Abbie Cornish, Sam Worthington, Lynette Curran, Erik Thomson, Hollie Andrew, Leah Purcell, Olivia Pigeot, Blake Pittman, Nathaniel Dean, Damian de Montemas.
Blonde, lissom, sixteen-year-old Heidi (Abbie Cornish) is as fluid as water and as without boundaries. She pursues her need for love and acceptance like a stream flowing rapidly down a mountain, searching out any crevice to hold her, contain her and give her definition. Somersault is set in the snowy mountain lake town of Jindabyne in the Australian Capital Territory. The frozen, defensive edges of nearly all the other characters in the film are thus set in a background of extraordinary, natural transient beauty creating a haunting, poetic impression. It’s a significant feat for the debut feature of talented director Cate Shortland.
We first meet Heidi living with her mother Nicole (Olivia Pigeot) and her mother’s boyfriend Adam (Damian de Montemas) in a dilapidated house in rural snow country. Her schoolgirl scrapbook, full of a childish handwriting, drawings, cut-outs and photos, gives a glimpse of a glitter-encrusted white fantasy horse. It’s an example of how deftly this young girl’s inner life is reflected throughout the film, as we follow her perilous foray into an exploratory kiss and sexual advance to Adam when her mother leaves for work. Nicole’s unexpected return has Heidi running from the shock and angry rejection on her mother’s face. She heads for Jindabyne, a resort town in the Snowy Mountains, hoping a phone number on a scrap of paper will find her shelter with a young man she met briefly once.
Her plan, such as it is, fails, and Heidi drifts into a noisy resort bar, where her predicament is highlighted against the raucous camaraderie of the other patrons. Her dangerous facility for latching on to potential protectors is tested as young men eager to take advantage of her defencelessness use her and discard her. Despite this, Heidi retains throughout the film a kind of purity, simply moving on without resentment or self-pity. She flows through the intense cold of exterior landscapes from which all colour except blues and greys has been removed into the warmly lit interiors of bars, shops and houses. Contrasting brilliant reds, for example in Heidi’s red gloves, symbolise the elusive heart of connection that is possible between these guarded, very real, people.
The tentative back-and-filling of the initial stages of a relationship with Joe (Sam Worthington), a young man from a wealthy landowning family, allows each of them to challenge the other in the interface of fear, need and intimacy. Where Heidi wants the depth of love and acceptance and pursues it through casual sexual encounters, the theme is also explored in Joe’s male relationships with his friend Stuart (Nathaniel Dean), his taciturn father and Richard, (Erik Thomson) a gay neighbour. Despite Joe’s condemnation of Heidi, based on fear of intimacy, he also attempts to find closeness and acceptance through a sexual advance to Richard – and it’s probable he would never have dared this had Heidi not awakened his sensitivity and upset his comfort zone so thoroughly. The film adroitly shows how the more we need, the more we unconsciously push what we need away.
Despite Heidi’s lack of boundaries which marks her as a troublemaker with some and isolates her further in their suspicious judgment and lack of acceptance, she is not manipulative nor even intentionally seductive. Her one mechanism is to strip herself bare in her search for love, emotionally and literally at one point – and her nakedness in the snow resonates so powerfully with Joe’s own vulnerability it scares him off. She seems to exist without a sense of her own presence, without any idea of her own personal space or the personal space of others. So she can automatically tuck the tag back in at the neck of a stranger’s clothing without realising the implications or the misconceptions she’s incurring in his mind (although she fluidly goes with the sudden sexual subtext while it is there). She touches Joe as though she’s seeking to merge with him in the undifferentiated way of those with poor self esteem, to gain acknowledgement of her own existence by his response, though it is real intimacy and connection she seeks. An erosive element in her is guilt at having kissed her mother’s boyfriend.
As Heidi Abbie Cornish is as transparent as an ice sprite and contrasts beautifully against the earthy solidity of Sam Worthington’s conflicted, somewhat stuck, Joe. Other notable performances include Lynette Curran as Irene, the motel owner whose unconditional forgiveness of her criminal son makes possible Heidi’s redemption. Erik Thomson gives a warm and self-assured performance as Richard – perhaps the least neurotic and the most self-knowing and self-accepting of all the characters. As Bianca, Heidi’s friend at the service station where she finds work, Hollie Andrew’s performance is poignant and textured, while Nathaniel Dean brings recognisability to Joe’s wild boy best friend Stuart.
Themes of decay and emptiness echo throughout with empty swimming pools littered with dead leaves and Heidi, often alone in the wintry landscape, with a blue-tinged bleached sun or the full moon shining through bare tree branches. Its bleak natural beauty reflects and nourishes her in a way that the frenetic, alcoholic jollity and noise of the bars does not. She is looking in the wrong place.
Matching the superb design and cinematography by Robert Humphreys the acting is authentic and layered. Writer/director Shortland has achieved an impressive depth of emotionality and complexity in the characterisation and script. This was recognised when the film was officially selected at Cannes in 2004 in the category Un Certain Regard, where it received a standing ovation.
The film has an open ending and stops, like a somersault, almost where it began. In this, and in the fact that we are dropped into the story without exposition, it bears similarities to You Can Count on Me. Cinematically however, it bears more resemblance to European films, particularly in the way it is lit and framed, and in a universal theme that is not specifically Australian. A brilliant soundtrack by Australian band Decoder Ring scores this poignant and poetically rich film.
© Avril Carruthers, 16th September 2004
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