Peaches
Those of you who have been waiting the long seven years for Craig Monahan’s (The Interview) second film can now rest assured that he hasn’t disappeared from the face of Australian cinema — he was simply waiting for the right script. Peaches is the story of Steph, a young woman who, on the night of her coming-of-age birthday, receives her dead mother’s journal. The next day she begins working at the factory where both her mother and father (also dead) worked. The two narratives interplay to tell a story of the past and the present, both of which are the deciding factors for Steph’s future. It is a story of love: between men and women, friends and mother and daughter (adoptive but nonetheless).
Newcomer Emma Lung is impressive as she portrays a naïve yet mature-beyond-her-years girl on the verge of womanhood. Her lover Alan (played effortlessly by Hugo Weaving) is complex: you want to hate him but you somehow understand him. Jacqueline McKenzie is Jude, Alan’s ex lover and Steph’s adoptive mother. Though she’s meant to be stifling and void of any joy, McKenzie is subtle and entirely believable. The storyline is emotional and the mood is somewhat melancholy, save for fleetingly charming flashbacks to the past and scenes between Steph and Brian (Matt Le Nevez), Alan’s half brother. Though the movie is quite heavy, emotionally, it is never overdone or slow. The score (by David Hirschfelder, Shine) is striking — a haunting play on the themes of a lost past, a trapped present and an uncertain future.
The seven year wait was perhaps too long and I could even say the outcome was slightly anticlimactic but Peaches is a story that draws you in and deserves critical praise for the smoothness of its telling.
Heather Taylor Johnson
