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Friday, Mar 4, 1994
Bedevil
Tracey Moffatt is heir apparent to Jane Campion for absolutely quirky, resolutely controlled Australian filmmaking. Moffatt calls forth the ghosts of her aboriginal culture and proves (like Val Lewton) that, when it comes to the supernatural on film, style is all. A deft mixture of straight-on storytelling and reenactment traverses time and generations in three distinct tales: In the first, a ne'er-do-well aboriginal man and a white woman recall their childhood near a swamp haunted by the ghost of an American soldier. Later, a cinema was built on the site and still later a housing tract, which Moffatt's camera literally creates in a tracking shot. The second, again a story in "flashback," tells of a young wife living near a railway track haunted by a girl who had been killed there. In the third, a Greek-Australian landlord tries to evict his tenants but their relatives and their ghosts are tenacious. Casual scenes are set off by eerily re-created settings, and the film's perfection of racial admixture finally gives "diversity" a relaxed home.
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