First Love

Claire Gorman’s documentary, First Love is, like its subjects, Jess, Nikki and India and their love of surfing, a film that sweeps you off your feet with its youthfully guileless charm. Although there is a narrative structure and a moral to the story, there is no real attempt to re-shape the material into a classical dramatic form. Jess’s voice-over tells the story of how she and her buddies prepare for their awfully big adventure, of her 11^th hour set-back, of how things don’t go to plan and of what she learns from the experience but it is told with a simple, matter-of-fact directness that works so well precisely because one does not feel manipulated by the film-makers, as is often the case with documentaries. Which is not to say that First Love is not a sophisticated work.  

Gorman, a 22 year old qualified surf instructor with an already impressive track record in documentary-making and her co-creators, Clare Plueckhahn and Fran Derham, have an evident rapport with their subjects and film has a wonderful video diary intimacy to it. Whilst Jess, Nikki and India are naturally-winning teen girls, the fact that this naturalness and spontaneity comes across so well is a testament to the skills of the film-makers. The camera work, whether of the girls in the cramped quarters of a car or in long-shot, riding the waves, is always precise yet unobtrusive.  Another crucial factor in the success of the film is the editing. Combining archival home movie material with surfing footage, interspersed with the girls and their friends and peers talking direct to camera and the whole thing knitted together with an excellent indie-pop soundtrack, First Love is marvellously effective in portraying the girls’ spirited lives and the local surfing scene of which they are an integral part.

Jess, Nikki and India and their friends seem encouragingly untainted by modern trends to globalized, emaciated, pasty-faced celebrity culture. Indeed, although this generation of teens has an unquestioned self-confidence and independence unknown to the girls of Puberty Blues (d. Bruce Beresford, 1981), in terms of raw vitality there is little here to distinguish their world from the 1970s heyday of surfing in Australia when sun, surf and sand were our national emblems. If only for this insight, First Love should be seen by every teen girl in Australia.  

 FYI: After initial screenings were enthusiastically received the producers received private funding. As a result the film was recut, losing a good deal of spontaneity in the process. The review above is of the original cut.

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