Australian
Screen

Clip description

Laura (Susannah Fowle) and Evelyn (Hilary Ryan) make up after a big fight. Evelyn takes Laura into her bed and comforts her. Next day, Laura interrogates her friend about seeing the headmistress, Mrs Gurley (Sheila Helpmann). She confronts Evelyn about her decision to leave the school. She declares that she won’t let her go.

Curator’s notes

A good illustration of Susannah Fowle’s very truthful performance. Laura is at times a fairly unlikeable character, but always an intriguing one, because she’s so passionate. Fowle was untrained as an actor, but an accomplished pianist. Beresford had experience working with unschooled actors, and was unfazed by the task. Indeed, he has said he prefers untrained but natural actors to those who have been to acting school. Susannah Fowle has only appeared in one other movie – Bill Bennett’s A Street to Die (1985). Beresford was attracted to the story because Laura was such an unlikeable character. To some extent, it’s a film about the way she learns to lie and cheat her way to success. 'The people around her, the conforming Australians I know so well, seemed to deserve defeat,’ he told writer Peter Coleman.

The film’s depiction of budding love between the two girls was controversial at the time, even though it remains unclear if Beresford meant to suggest they became lovers. Their cuddle in clip three could simply be just that. British film scholar Robin Wood has praised the film, in An Australian Film Reader (1985), as 'almost the only treatment of lesbianism within commercial cinema that is entirely sympathetic and uncompromised’. 'For once, lesbianism is treated as a perfectly valid and natural human experience requiring neither apology nor explanation.’