Walking On Water

The term "brave film-making" is somewhat hackneyed but it applies in this instance, both because of the difficulty of the subject matter and the demands it makes on all concerned to get it right.

The story, set in a Sydney Northern beach suburb, of a group of family and friends trying coming to terms with the death of a loved one from AIDS, none of then doing particularly well. It is not the sort of topic to pack the stalls, but the film, which won five AFI Awards amongst many others, has a densely-written script by Roger Monk that takes some effort to decipher in terms of character relations but which avoids sentimentality or posture. It also is graced with sympathetic performances all round, particularly from Maria Theodorakis and Vince Colosimo in the leads and a very convincing David Bonney as the dying Gavin.

Ayres' directing is economical and appropriately understated in a familiar Australian realist style and it is little surprise that his previous experience has largely been in documentary film (he had also worked as a script editor on the subject-related Soft Fruit in1999). This is slightly problematic as Walking On Water is a quite lugubrious experience, something which the makers, presumably with an eye on the box office try to alleviate towards the end with a little levity and a conventionally neat resolution. Having set themselves such an unremittingly glum agenda it would have been better had they stuck with it. Commercial suicide perhaps but a stronger film might have been the result.

 

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