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clip 2Clip description
Celia (Geneviève Picot) drives Martin (Hugo Weaving) home after a disastrous night out together. She has declared her love and made sexual overtures, but he has recoiled in horror. Outside his house, she tells him she’s the only one he can trust, not Andy. He doesn’t believe her. Alone in his bedroom, Martin cries and remembers the day years earlier when his mother (Heather Mitchell) told him she was going to die. In flashback the childish Martin (Jeffrey Walker) accuses her of trying to get away from him.
Curator’s notes
The script walks a delicate line, in terms of characterisation, because it would be easy to lose sympathy with both of these characters. Celia’s cruel games – as in clip two – could have made her seem a bit of a monster. Martin’s bitterness and suspicion could similarly have been off-putting, but each actor gives us a sense of their character’s humanity, as well as their cruelty.
It’s partly a film about the crushing of innocence, because Andy, the Russell Crowe character, is far less manipulative than either of these two. He doesn’t know that people of his own age could be so hurtful to each other. He’s the one who restores a balance to the film’s darkness, because he’s so much more trusting. The script has a great understanding of the shadings within the hearts of these characters, and an extraordinary range of emotions to examine.
