Celia **** (1988, Rebecca Smart, Nicholas Eadie, Victoria Longley) – Classic Movie Review 13,018

The extraordinary 1988 Australian feature Celia is a film of many parts: part gothic drama, part horror film, part black comedy, part growing-up story.

This remarkable and startling first feature from 28-year-old writer-director Ann Turner focuses on the oddball childhood of an imaginative nine-year-old called Celia (impressively played by Rebecca Smart, aged 12) and explores the fantasy, paranoia and complications of her early years.

The extraordinary 1988 Australian feature Celia is a film of many parts: part gothic drama, part horror film, part black comedy, part growing-up story – Celia’s grandmother dies; Celia murders her horrid uncle; her appealing pet rabbit Murgatroyd becomes the victim of the myxomatosis scare – and part comment on Australian life at the end of the 1950s.

Celia is a fresh, funny and more than a little strange rites-of-passage movie set on the outskirts of Melbourne in 1957 during the Red Scare.

Also in the cast are Nicholas Eadie, Victoria Longley, Mary-Anne Fahey, Margaret Ricketts, Alexander Hutchinson, Adrian Mitchell, Callie Gray, and Martin Sharman.

Celia is directed by Ann Turner, runs 103 minutes, is made by Seon Film Productions, is released by Hoyts Distribution, is written by Ann Turner, is shot by Geoffrey Simpson, is produced by Timothy White and Gordon Glenn, is scored by Chris Neal, and is designed by Peta Lawson.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,018

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