SWEET AS. Australia, 2022. Starring Shantae Barnes-Cowan, Tasma Walton, Carlos Sanson Jr, Mark Coles Smith, Ngaire Pigram, Pedrea Jackson, Mikayla Levy and Andrew Wallace. Directed by Jub Clerc. 87 minutes. Rated M (Mature themes, coarse language and sexual references)
For Australian audiences, as well as overseas audiences, this film is an invitation to explore Western Australia’s Pilbara country. And we are invited to share the experience with four troubled teenagers who go on an organised safari with two supervisors. It is an opportunity for them to get away from their surroundings and face some of their problems. The key is for each of the four to have a camera and to create stories from their chosen photos, coming to some kind of self-appreciation and self-understanding.
The central youngster is Murra, played attractively and more than competently by Barnes-Cowan, who has already shown a talent for acting in film and television. Still a school student, she indulges in some shoplifting. Her mother, a drinker, is highly critical of her and some of the drinkers in the house tried to molest her. Fortunately, she has a sympathetic uncle, a local policeman, Ian, played by the ever-reliable Mark Coles Smith. It is he who gets her a place on the minibus for the camera safari. She is joined by three other youngsters, Sean, pale and thin, depressed and sometimes feeling suicidal; Elvis, aboriginal boy who suffered the trauma of being beaten up but still has a lively personality; Kylie, white girl, dominated by an adult white male, surly. But, the chaperones on the trip are very sympathetic, Tasma Walton is a no-nonsense driver and advisor, Carlos Sanson Jr is the photography expert (explaining himself as Fernando, Nando, exiled from Nicaragua with his photographer mother and academic father, Carlos Sanson Jr coming from Sydney but with Cuban-Chilean background).
Dramatically, there are not too many surprises along the way. But, that is not the point. The point is to look at the portrait of the four, sense their inadequacies, see their limitations, even in relating to each other, the false steps they take, the clashes, their being left to fend for themselves in the bush, the responding to some crises, and the photographs.
Murra finds that photography is one of her talents, carefully choosing pictures, and the audience seeing the title at the side of each photo she takes. She is on country and we observe country through her eyes, the extraordinary beauty of the rock formations, the water holes and waterfalls…
So, on the whole, this is a sweet film, not a dramatic blockbuster! There is a great sense of humanity. And, in the year of the referendum and The Voice, a visit to indigenous families, hardships, violence, drinking, family neglect – no privileges there. The Voice is an appeal to better First Nations conditions.
Roadshow
Released 1 June 2023