moviereview - Beautiful

BEAUTIFUL

	A teenage boy takes his camera into the suburbs, looking for dark, damaging and dangerous secrets his beautiful neighbour insists are there.	score 2	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Sebastian Gregory, Asher Keddie, Peta Wilson, Deborra-Lee Furness

Director
Dean O'Flaherty

Screenwriter
Dean O'Flaherty

Country
Australia

Rating / Running Time
M / 97 minutes

Australian Release
March 2009

Official Site

There’s something unpleasant about Adelaide that doesn’t make it to the tourist literature. A dark seam of intangible gloom that permeates movies from 2:37 to Look Both Ways and now Dean O’Flaherty’s ironically titled Beautiful, which of course, is anything but.

The story opens behind twitching curtains as Mrs Thomson narrates the alarming history of Sunshine Hills: missing girls, allegations of rape and incest, families in distress, and the darkened house at Nr 46. “What they don’t talk about is the fear,” she says. Her attention-seeking daughter Suzy finds it irresistibly thrilling and enlists Danny, a doting fifteen-year-old neighbour, to spy on Sunshine Hills. There’s little he wouldn’t do for Lolita, er, Suzy.

O’Flaherty gives us much to admire about his suburban gothic update on the Boo Radley story. His willingness to embrace silence for one thing. Paul Mac’s soundtrack is supportive, rather than intrusive. Elegant camerawork enhances the story telling. His exploration of broken homes, while not exactly fresh, is well handled.

Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, Beautiful turns ugly. Just as many ideas were simmering nicely, someone turns the setting to eleven and the entire contents boil over. Restraint is abandoned as a level of narrative and visual hysteria takes over, ideas new and barely connected are forcefully introduced, undermining most of what has been established. A promising examination of media induced fear and paranoia is overwhelmed by gothic horror.

Given the film's expectaton, intriguing premise and solid production, Beautiful is something of a disappointment. But by the time you’ve been thrown headlong at the film’s sordid and overblown conclusion, the headache is such that you no longer care. It’s another thing they don’t tell you about in the tourist literature.

// COLIN FRASER