DAVID ADAMS watches the new Australian film based on a Tim Winton book…
Blueback (AU – PG)
In a word: Endearing
Based on Australian writer Tim Winton’s book, Blueback opens with marine scientist Abby Jackson (played by Mia Wasikowska) receiving a phone call in which she’s told that her mother has had a stroke; a call which leads her to put aside her work aboard a boat monitoring the growing deterioration of a coral reef and head home for the first time in years.
“Evocative in places of the 1976 Australian classic Storm Boy (remade in 2019), Blueback replays classic themes of the destructive nature of humanity’s worst and those who must fight to save it from them.”
Once there, she reconnects with her old life and director Robert Connelly then employs a series of flashbacks to tell Abby’s story. Abby (who is predominantly played by Isla Fogg as a child) spent a rather idyllic childhood with her widowed mother Dora (Radha Mitchell) in a remote Australian coastal community (filmed in Western Australia’s Bremer Bay).
Dora has spent her life enjoying and advocating for the marine environment in which she spends much of her time and is eager to pass that passion on to her daughter. When Abby’s just eight-years-old, Dora takes her to meet one of the denizens of the underwater world, a blue groper whom Abby dubs ‘Blueback’.
But time passes and the marine world – and Blueback – which they have both come to love, comes increasingly under threat from developers and they’re plunged into a battle for its survival as Dora pursues her vision of having their bay.
Evocative in places of the 1976 Australian classic Storm Boy (remade in 2019), Blueback replays classic themes of the destructive nature of humanity’s worst and those who must fight to save it from them.
While the cast – which also includes Eric Bana as the Jackson’s friend “Macka” – is a strong one, the film’s characters and backgrounds are only fairly superficially sketched out, there’s a few plot oddities, and it ultimately ends up lacking the raw emotional punch of a film like Storm Boy.
But it’s the multi-layered story which drives this film and viewers are rewarded with, as one might expect, some terrific underwater scenes and some great footage of the rugged beauty of the Aussie coast. And that, even with its shortcomings, makes it good one for whole family.
