Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Praise (1998)

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clip 'She's exhausting'

Original classification rating: R. This clip chosen to be M

Clip description

Gordon (Peter Fenton) and Cynthia (Sacha Horler) are at a house-warming party. Gordon has just discovered that the woman he has had a crush on since he was 12 has been having sex in one of the bedrooms. Cynthia drags him away to drop some acid. She then terrifies him by driving at high speed with the lights off, while tripping. Next day, Gordon and his friend Leo (Joel Edgerton) discuss their girlfriends before going to meet them at a bar. Gordon is exhausted.

Curator’s notes

by Paul Byrnes

Part of the success of the movie comes from Sacha Horler’s extraordinary embodiment of Cynthia as a force of nature, a whirlwind of emotions, needs and impulses. Peter Fenton’s Gordon is a perfect foil – timid, malleable, sensitive and lost in the adult world. Neither of them has completely left childhood behind, but in a good way. They’re still capable of being relatively honest and straightforward with each other. She’s incapable of self-censoring; Gordon has no idea what he thinks about anything, so he tends not to lie, but he’s afraid of his own emotions – and that will destroy the relationship. There’s an interesting comparison to be made between Cynthia as a symbol of rebellion and Genevieve Lemon’s character in Jane Campion’s film Sweetie (also on this site) – a film that looks at similar character types.

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