Moving Out

A 14 year-old Vince Colosimo began his screen career impressively in this coming-of-age story of Gino, an Italo-Australian growing up in the Melbourne inner-city suburb of North Fitzroy. His parents are about live the migrant dream and move to suburban Doncaster whilst Gino wants to stay with his mates and break out of his ethnic enclave.

Written by Jan Sardi (who went on to write Shine) who was a schoolteacher and based the script on his own experiences (Colosimo was one of his pupils, and most of the students in the film are from his school, St Joseph’s) thus  lending the film a good deal of robust realism. It was one of the first Australian films to deal with the migrant experience.

Slightly overlong and at times a little too slow-moving (in particular the hit song 'Ti Amo" is over-used) the supposed Calabrian dialect is poorly represented by non-native speakers (Pia Miranda’s older sister Nicole in her understandably only screen appearance plays Maria, Sardi's brother, Gino's father) and the portrayal of Gino's home life tends to the caricatural but despite its rough edges if anything the film has gained value as an authentic-feeling document of its time and place.

 

Want something different?