Has Australian cinema finally outgrown the tasteless buddy flicks and braincell depleting tripe for which it is synonymous? Let’s hope so because that’s not a brainless stereotype laden film – THAT’s a brainless stereotype laden film.
Thankfully this cultural backwater thing we got going on shows signs of lifting. In 2009, Warwick Thornton’s Samson And Delilah claimed the prestigious Camera d’Or at Cannes by mirroring the absolute power, natural beauty and alienation of the Outback (not since 1971’s Wake In Fright has an Australian film so masterfully captured the strange dichotomy that dwells within the sparse centre of our country).
And now, in 2010, Australian writer/director David Michod has recently claimed a Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for the forthcoming Animal Kingdom. Enlisting the likes of Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn and Joel Edgerton, Animal Kingdom follows a seventeen year-old boy as he deals with an explosive criminal family and the detective who thinks he can save him. Check out the trailer below, which manages to balance the harrowing and hilarious with a completely incongruous Air Supply backing track. Definitely one to look out for.
