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Clip description
Noeline Baker’s insistence that Paul Baker and wife Dione could and should do better to provide for their newborn son is exacerbating tensions that have long existed between Paul and his mother.
Curator’s notes
This excerpt opens with a scene in which Dione, feeling vulnerable in her post-natal state, is transformed by a simple trip to the hairdressers. The camera captures perfectly her delight at the new self she sees reflected in the mirror and the equal pleasure on husband Paul’s face when he comes to pick her up. Simple, satisfying moments like these are what soap operas often miss completely, despite their reputation for recording the minutiae of everyday life. Similarly touching scenes of Paul and Dione’s wonder at the miracle of parenthood are intercut, as this clip briefly shows, with Noeline’s unwanted intrusions, her well-intentioned but usually misplaced advice.
It is unlikely that the producers set out to portray Noeline as the monster typified by the British tabloid press headline, ‘Meet Noeline: By Tonight You’ll Hate Her Too’. The documentary is actually a lot more objective about her than either the British newspapers or the Australian critics were at the time. As seen here, Noeline comes over as a doting grandmother who makes the quite common assumption that success is measured by the extent of your material possessions. Paul has a completely different idea of what constitutes happiness. Noeline’s ‘treading lightly’ on the subject of Paul and Dione buying their own home eventually drives a wedge between them, but this clip shows that she is unaware this is even a possibility. Noeline, as director Brian Hill observed, ‘says what she thinks and doesn’t always think what she’s saying’. And that’s what makes her such a compelling ‘character’ for the audience.
