REVIEWS Toomelah REVIEWED BY LEE MARSHALL


The limbo of life in a contemporary Australian aboriginal community — or ‘mission’ — is shown with sentiment-tinged realism in Ivan Sen’s Toomelah, which is entirely set in the kind of rural ghetto of the indigenous dispossessed from which the protagonists of Warwick Thornton’sSamson & Delilah fled. Seeing the action, and the place, through the


eyes of a troubled 10-year-old boy, Daniel, gives the film a focus and heart, as we root for him to turn out okay. But this is still a tough and slow- moving exercise whose slight story is stretched almost to breaking point over the film’s one-and- three-quarter-hour running time. There is a haunting quality to the film’s young


protagonist, a kind of fragile strength which makes Sen’s film something more than a coura- geous and worthy ethnic minority exercise using non-professional actors. But at the same time the rather conventional characters and story make this a less surefire international arthouse distribu- tion prospect than Thornton’s tough love story — and that was not exactly an easy sell. What Toomelah leaves us with is a real sense of


place — and what a sad place it is, a dusty nowhere town of houses built from clapperboard and breeze block with no plan or centre, ringed by a periphery of trailers and auto cemeteries. Daniel (Connors) lives here, with his laissez-faire mother and elderly grandmother; dad is a former boxer who has turned to meths.


UN CERTAIN REGARD


Aus. 2011. 106mins Director/screenplay/ cinematography/editor/ music Ivan Sen Production companies Bunya Productions, Screen Australia, Screen NSW International sales Visit Films, www.visitfilms.com Producer David Jowsey Website www. toomelahthemovie.com Main cast Daniel Connors, Christopher Edwards, Dean Daley- Jones


Daniel is clearly unhappy. He gets into fights at


school and soon drops out altogether, taking up instead with an alternative family headed by drug dealer Linden (Edwards), who hangs out with a bunch of heavy-drinking cronies. When a rival dealer, returned white jailbird


Bruce (Daley-Jones), starts stealing Linden’s cli- ents, Daniel is sent to case the joint — an act which will eventually lead to the rather staged explosion of violence which provides some sort of turning point in the sluggish plot. There is a sense in which Sen is ticking off abo-


riginal issues in his screenplay: drugs, alcohol abuse, prison, broken homes, truancy, teenage pregnancies, sexism (via a rather randomly inserted scene in which Linden tells two girls who


have sat down by the campfire to get lost), the forced confinement of nomadic tribes to Euro- pean-style settlements, the dying out of aboriginal language and culture. The director clearly feels very strongly about the loss of pride and race memories (like animal totems) that the film charts, but the story at times seems more a vehicle for a message than a genuine drama. Sen’s handheld digital camerawork, much of it


shot at dawn or dusk, is tasty and colour-saturated. There are no haunting didgeridoos on the sound- track; instead the film makes use of the kind of commercial hip-hop young people on the reserva- tions actually listen to, though two guitar ballads hint at a richer musical culture, which is disap- pearing like so much else in this twilight world.


UN CERTAIN REGARD Miss Bala BY ALLANHUNTER


Impossible dreams of a glamorous life collide with the grim everyday reality of a lawless Mexico in Miss Bala (which translates as ‘Miss Bullet’), a darkly ironic tale from writer/director Gerardo Naranjo. The story of how easily one individual can surrender to the implacable demands of a cor- rupt culture is the basis of a compelling if overlong thriller which sheds some genuine insight into a country where the annual drug trade alone is esti- mated to be worth $25bn. Naranjo’s first feature since I’m Going To Explode (Voy A Explotar)


should benefit from his growing international reputation and a mature handling of potentially sensational material. Stephanie Sigman stars as Laura, a 23 year old


in Cuidad, Juarez, whose bedroom walls are fes- tooned with images of Madonna, Audrey Hepburn and other global icons. Her dream is to participate in a beauty contest which will crown the lucky winner Miss Baja California. In the wrong place at the wrong time, she witnesses a raid by the notori- ous Star gang on a club. Police officers are killed and her close friend is


now missing. Laura turns to the police but finds herself delivered into the hands of charismatic gang boss Lino (Hernandez) who demands a favour in return for her freedom. It is the begin-


n 20 Screen International at the Cannes Film Festival May 15, 2011


Mex. 2011. 113mins Director/editor Gerardo Naranjo Production Companies Canana Films, Fox International Productions International sales Fox International productions ProducerPablo Cruz Screenplay Gerardo Naranjo, Mauricio Katz CinematographyMatyas Erdely Production designer Ivonne Fuentes MusicEmilio Kauderer Main castStephanie Sigman, Noe Hernandez, James Russo, Jose Yenque, Irene Azuela


ning of a journey which pulls her into the heart of the gang’s activities and a world where it is impos- sible to find anyone who can be trusted. Like a latterday Alice, the innocent Laura tum-


bles into a topsy-turvy world of endless moral dilemmas where all her better instincts only serve to place her in greater danger. Sigman’s effective performance captures the character’s growing sense of distress and of being a woman running out of options. Driven by a strong narrative line, Miss Bala


grabs our attention because of a certain disbelief at what is happening to Laura and why there is no conventional white knight riding to her rescue. The film leaves a number of lingering questions in the mind, including why Lino and the gang decide to make continued use of Laura rather than killing off what would seem a minor incon- venience to them. The idea, presumably, is to show that anyone,


especially a pretty young woman, is a commodity to be used at the whim of anyone who chooses to exercise power in what appears to be a vacuum. Naranjo stages a number of tense action sequences which have neither the flamboyance nor exuberance of a Hollywood production but merely serve to underline the notion that gunfire, death and kidnapping are everyday events in Mex- ico’s cities. He allows the film to drift slightly when Lino


uses his persuasive powers to win Laura her place in the beauty pageant. You can almost feel the excitement starting to seep away before Naranjo gets everything back on track for a bullet-strewn finale which effectively sums up the sense of moral chaos and bitter irony which runs through the film.


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