Bran Nue Dae (PG). Running time: 85 minutes. Director: Rachel Perkins. Starring: Rocky McKenzie, Jessica Mauboy, Ernie Dingo, Geoffrey Rush, Missy Higgins, Tom Budge, Magda Szubanski
There's nothing I would rather be/Than to be an Aborigine.
Moments after I left the cinema, I caught myself singing it. For the next hour the melody continued to bob about in my brain. Not a malicious infection, like an insidious pop song might be, but infectious nonetheless. I'm sure anyone who heard me whistling it would unknowingly have picked up the tune. The song, like the film it appears in, tends to remain with you. In most cases the association will be a fond one.
Yes, Bran Nue Dae is silly, but it's fun. It is imbued with such joyful irreverence that it's hard to imagine that any but the grumpiest of filmgoers could bear it ill-will. Take, for example, Missy Higgins, in her supporting role as an airhead hippy. Clearly, she's been cast for her singing, her persona, and not her acting. But she visibly has a good time with the role. Likewise Geoffrey Rush, who hams it up as a nasty German born priest, Father Benedictus.
Bran Nue Dae is a musical-comedy-coming-of-age-road-movie, directed by filmmaker and Arrente woman Rachel Perkins, and based on the 1990 stage musical of the same name. Set in the mid-1960s, it follows the adventures and the eccentric encounters experienced by Aboriginal teen Willie (McKenzie) as he traverses the long stretch of highway from Fremantle to Broome.
After fleeing the Christian mission where he had been sent to be schooled by the brutal and patronising Benedictus, Willie heads north, drawn homewards to Broome by idyllic memories of spear-fishing off the untouched coastline, and by images of the angelic face of his would-be girlfriend, Rosie (Mauboy).
He gets a little help on his way from the drunken, roguish Uncle Tadpole (a show-stealing Dingo), as well as a couple of impressionable young hippies (Budge and Higgins) who unwittingly agree to drive the Aboriginal pair 'up the road' to Broome in their fried-out combie.
Easier said than done. Benedictus is in pursuit, never far behind them on the sweltering highway. Even if they can escape him Willie has his own self-doubts to endure: once he gets home, he'll still need to somehow stare down his rival for Rosie's affections, thuggish bar singer Lester (soul singer Sultan, revelling in this swaggering bad boy role).
Along