Word: tides
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Part of a national attempt to mobilize student workers, these undergraduates and recent graduates are going all out to turn the tide for faltering candidates and help push campaigns of popular candidates down the long road to the summer conventions...
There is old-maidishness and there is the new celibacy. And everyone knows the cure for both of these unfortunate conditions: a man. Any man. The good news about these two small movies -- The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and High Tide -- is that they permit their heroines ambiguous triumphs over this conventional wisdom. The bad news is that neither movie dares triumph over the conventionally compassionate view of the women. Or, for that matter, over the limits of conventionally mannered filmmaking...
...High Tide's Lilli (seething enigmatically under the tight rein of Judy Davis' performance) is quite like Judith Hearne. Rootlessly she ranges the Australian provinces as another sort of fringe musician, backup singer for an Elvis imitator. She too drinks, and though she will indulge in desultory sex, it is not a high priority with her. Most important, she too is presented with a last chance to turn her life around -- to reveal her identity and reclaim her long-abandoned daughter Ally (the soberly lovely Claudia Karvan...
Unlike Judith Hearne, High Tide is not whiny and overexplained. And under the direction of Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, Mrs. Soffel), the lead actresses have an honest naturalism that almost makes us forget the coincidences and arthritic manipulations of Laura Jones' script. But instead of calming our suspicions, Armstrong's camera work -- all zip pans, fast tracking and erratic boom shots -- reinforces them. Maybe she should take phlegmatic lessons from Jack Clayton...
...more than speech could offer and triggered a return to the written word, most likely because no one would listen if you tried to tell them this stuff. Despite alarmist protests ("If God had wanted us to write things down, he wouldn't have made dinosaurs extinct.") the progressive tide won out, and writing was given an historic second chance...