Australian
Screen

Clip description

In the middle of the night, Beatrice (Anne Louise Lambert) readies herself physically and emotionally for her and Maeve’s journey to the underworld. She remembers the childhood origins of her ‘yearning to know’ and begins the process of trying to reawaken that yearning in her adult mind. She dresses Maeve (Maeve Dermody) and prepares to leave.

Curator’s notes

Beatrice, Dante’s guide through heaven, was a child when Dante first met her, and Anne Louise Lambert was still a teenager when she played the role for which she is best known in Australia: Miranda in the 1975 Picnic at Hanging Rock. Breathing Under Water is something of a revenge for both Dante’s idealised Beatrice and Picnic’s ethereal Miranda, virginally sacrificed to the Australian landscape. Breathing Under Water’s Beatrice knows a thing or two. She has a child of her own and she carries the burden of knowledge of ‘the malignancy of history’. Most importantly, she’s a female character who’s been handed a quest – which in 1991 was still a cinema rarity.

In this clip Beatrice prepares for her journey and unearths the first of a series of childhood memories. Throughout the film her memories of both actual events and dreams are represented by animation segments, each beautifully realised by Lee Whitmore. Whitmore was already one of Australia’s best-known animators at the time Breathing Under Water was made, and her work on the film was integral to its structure. Animation work began before principal photography and Whitmore had assistance from fellow animator Astrid Nordheim and colourist Marinka Kordis. Whitmore worked from Murphy Dermody’s actual childhood photographs to achieve the peculiar mix of formlessness and sharp detail characteristic of memory. The animated sequences have a colour akin to faded Box Brownie photographs and a quality reminiscent of mid 20th century children’s storybooks. Memory sequences, like the one in this clip, consist of dissolves between stills. Instead of two drawings per one frame of film, one drawing per four, six or twelve frames was used. In later sequences depicting dreams, the fluidity of movement is much greater.