The fictional Melbourne suburb of Sunshine Hills is in the grip of fear
after the rumoured abductions of three teenage girls. Living there is
Daniel (Sebastian Gregory), a shy 14-year-old introvert obsessed with
photography and his 17-year-old neighbour Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi), a
would-be Lolita. After they meet, Suzy capitalises on his crush on
her to promise him her friendship if he will bring her secrets and
photos of the neighbours and their activities. When Daniel meets one,
a very withdrawn woman named Jennifer (Asher Keddie) with a violent
boyfriend (Socratis Otto), their snooping lands them in some very hot
water. This extends to their separate home lives: Daniel with his
cold, secretive cop father Alan (Aaron Jeffery) and his conflicted
live-in girlfriend Sheree (Peta Wilson) and Suzy with her iron-fisted
mother (Deborra-Lee Furness aka Mrs. Hugh Jackman).
Debut
writer-director Dean O'Flaherty's Beautiful (2009) is just that. An
American Beauty/Neighbours hybrid may seem weird and incongruous
initially (in terms of tone), but through emphasizing the
similarities of those two while invoking his own perspective of
suburbia and with a very intuitive visual language he holds it
together the whole way. Credit here also goes to production designer
Robert Webb and cinematographer Kent Smith.
O'Flaherty
also gets dynamite performances from his whole cast, particularly
Peta Wilson as Daniel's browbeaten but courageous surrogate mother,
and while I usually hate EDM, Paul Mac's score enhances every scene.
Beautiful is a haunting portrait of modern Australian suburbia, and
of what happens when the child and adult worlds collide.
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