A sweet coming of age story, the 1990 Australian film Flirting features Noah Taylor and Thandie Newton (her movie big role) as two naive yet brainy teenagers (think good looking brainiacs) at prep school who fall in love but are torn apart by events larger than they understand in middle of nowhere, Australia, in 1965. The pair think that reading Camus and Sartre mean they understand the world, that everything they do is so serious and fraught with meaning, only to learn that 16 is truly a very young age.
Taylor (most recently he was Lara Croft’s computer geek) and Newton (Mission: Impossible 2 and The Truth About Charlie), close enough in age to their characters, easily convey the missteps and emotions that clutter young love. Nicole Kidman is the older girl who at first is mean to Newton but in the end softens when she sees her own past reflected and Naomi Watts has a small part as one of Newton’s close friends. Newton’s character is from Uganda and her father is a political activist who goes home when Idi Amin’s coup happens; she’s soon forced to follow and before she leaves the couple find a way to say goodbye that neither will forget.
Flirting is a very sweet movie until writer/director John Duigan (Sirens) pushes past the point of good taste to teach his children their lesson. Before that, one can see that Duigan is a stylist, using fantasy and photographs to connect this little pair of schools to the larger world, having one of Taylor’s classmates laugh incessantly, appropriate or not, to bring some relief to the barely relieved seriousness. This is film as literature, a movie that would never be understood in Hollywood, and a good example of why I’m glad Tivo believes I like Australian films.
Recommended
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