The directorial debut of P.J. Hogan, previously encountered as a producer on his wife's directorial debut, Proof. (Jocelyn Moorhouse herewith returns the favor, functioning as a producer on her husband's debut. ) But at that time he was going by the name of Paul Hogan, making for an unfortunate confusion with his same-named countryman, better known to the world at large as "Crocodile" Dundee. With this, P.J. Hogan has come a long way toward securing an identity all his own. Much of that identity resides in his discerning eye for color, for décor, for detail. The image is very brightly lit and crisply focussed (by cameraman Mark McGrath), establishing a kind of equal-opportunity field of vision, totally democratic, open, spacious. All around it, in the diverse but sparsely scattered forms of wallpaper, curtains, colored lights, a lampshade, an article of clothing, etc., Hogan sets off little firecracker detonations of vivacious color, or noisy dynamite blasts of color, or noxious nuclear clouds of color (gaseous blue, slimy green), creating an effect not unlike the random hit-and-run lyricism of Miró. No less discerning is Hogan's eye for faces and bodies, for assorted physical types. And in his lead actress, Toni Collette, he has one of those chameleonic types who can look completely different at different times, all the way from morosely homely to luminously comely, with intermediate stops at points like blankly innocent and raptly inquisitive and regressively infantile. The protagonist's personal odyssey gives her a rich variety of opportunity: from Porpoise Spit ("Jewel of the North Coast") to Sydney ("City of Brides") and back again; from Muriel to Mariel and, again, back; from a dysfunctional family of underachievers and couch potatoes to open insurrection ("You're terrible, Muriel," her sluglike sister keeps saying) and ultimate independence; from someone who thinks that marriage is the answer to everything to someone who thinks up new questions entirely. Over the course of all this, she becomes a walking billboard for the benefits of Attitude Adjustment. With Rachel Griffiths, Jeanie Drynan, Bill Hunter. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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