Chronicle of the crime spree of a couple of lamming lovers (Frances O'Connor and Matt Day, in roles very unlike theirs in Love and Other Catastrophes, and very unconvincing in them) up to their necks in more serious matters -- pedophilia, blackmail, murder -- than their normal drink-spiking and rolling of horny businessmen, a line of endeavor justified in the heroine's mind by the truly horrific childhood memory of the opening scene. In short, film noir travels Down Under (pronounced Dan Anda: Australian English seems to have fewer vowels in it than American English). Writer and director Bill Bennett makes good use of the much used landmarks of roadside tackiness -- gas station, motel, coffee shop -- and better use of an abandoned nuclear test site as a temporary hideout: "Very private." But the grasp of geography, chronology, logic in general, is now and again allowed to slip for the convenience of the plot: how did the pedophile and blackmail victim who was following the lovers get ahead of them at the truck stop? when did the stowaway get into the trunk of their stolen sport-utility vehicle? and why would the blackmail victim continue his pursuit of the incriminating videotape after its possessors had been nabbed by the cops? For no apparent reason apart from a case of the fidgets, Bennett inserts a lot of jarring jump-cuts into the flow of a scene, or even what merely look to be jump-cuts but are really just minor repositionings of the camera while the dialogue dribbles along without a break. It's almost forty years since Godard's Breathless, and only a bumpkin fallen off the proverbial turnip truck could get excited over a bunch of jump-cuts. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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