Breath

Synopsis: Two teenage boys, Pikelet (Samson Coulter) and Loonie (Ben Spence) growing up in a remote stretch of the Western Australian coast in the mid-1970s form a friendship with Sando (Simon Baker) an older surfer who mentors them in the art and lore of surfing. Meanwhile Pikelet falls for Sando’s younger girlfriend, Eva (Elizabeth Debicki).

Tasmanian-born star of the American TV series, The Mentalist, Simon Baker’s directorial feature film debut is an elegantly-crafted coming-of-age story. If it does not quite achieve the level of poignancy of John Duigan’s The Year My Voice Broke (1987), Breath is invested with the archetypal identity of classic Australian domestic culture which reached its apogee in the 1970s a time when the bush and the beach were still a stone’s throw from many people homes with their veggie gardens and chook sheds.

No doubt much of this is due to Tim Winton's award-winning and international bestselling novel on which the film is based (he grew up in Western Australia) but its success as such depends on the working together of all its component parts, from the acting to the production design, the cinematography to the music, all of which are interlocked in a graceful whole.

Yes, there is a little too much of Rick Rifici’s surfing footage, impressive as it is it, and sometimes it is difficult to tell if we should take Sando’s mystical ruminations on surfing seriously or not particularly as Baker is a little too old for the role. But on the other hand Rifici’s cinematography is awesome – you almost literally feel the icily cold, heaving water and the lurking danger below. Complementing this is Marden Dean’s fine principal photography which delights in the primeval coastline and the towering bush which are the alpha and omega of the boy’s everyday lives (the film was shot around the town of Denmark, near Albany). As a depiction of a time and place, one which sadly now seems long gone, the film is an unqualified success and anyone who grew up in ‘70s Australia will feel right at home.

The performances too are strong and here Nikki Barrett‘s casting deserves a mention. Clearly she had to find boys who could both surf (or were at least willing to learn) and act and she came up trumps with both Coulter as the reserved, thoughtful Pikelet and Spence as his devil-may-care best friend. While both give charmingly ingenuous performances the fact that the boys endured the icy waters (in the early part of the film without wet-suits) can only be called brave. Much the same can be said for Baker with all three appearing to do their own surfing. Elizabeth Debicki is bracingly different as Sando’s American girl-friend and Richard Roxburgh and Rachael Blake fill in their small roles well.

If the first half of the film comes perilously close to being too slow with only Winton’s poetical narration leavening the round of home-school-surf-home, the second part develops a subtle complexity as it explores Pikelet’s conflicted emotions (although here again I had trouble with ages as the boys are supposed to be 13 and both Coulter and Spence appear to be 2-3 years older than that, an age better suited to the story). Perhaps it helped that Baker's only role was directorial for much of this half.

Although the script which Baker worked on with Gerard Lee could have been a little tighter (I lost count of the number of times Baker said “Pikelet”) and a little less obviously vernacularised, particularly as a directorial debut, one moreover involving a major acting role, Breath is an impressive achievement and deserves to be seen on the big screen.

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