Walking on Water

This film is OK.

It positions itself safely in the territory of Lantanaland...earnest, frank, emotionally charged and sometimes tawdry.

The shots are uninspired as are the ideas the story is dealing with. Grief is sad....but can we go deeper? Can we dig a bit more and discover something truly perverse or honest about ourselves. Maybe his friends don't really care all that much. Maybe his mother is just a tad less likable. I am not sure. In the end...it all seemed a bit cinematic ally safe.

Everything made too much sense. Everything had been worked over far too much. LIFE is a great film about AIDS. SAFE and POISON are great films too. This is good but feels a bit like movie of the week.

Can you think of any movie whose main characters are homosexual which isn't all about homosexuality? I can't, but this is one, and it was such a delight to witness.

Fantastic acting, very realistic slice of life, but not much of a storyline.

I was disappointed to see that of the two big sex scenes in the movie, the homo one was over in a flash, and the het bonkathon, as usual, seemed to go on forever. Ah well, you can't have everything in a movie, I suppose.

I just watched this last night and it is a very heartfelt, interesting Australian movie.

It's a fantastic break from some recent Australian slop like 'Deck Dogz', 'Hating Alison Ashley', 'Strange Bedfellows' and 'Thunderstruck', to name just a few of the recent Australian failures.

I cried during the film, and that doesn't happen to me very often. Vince Colosimo does a fantastic performance, and the strength of the ensemble is amazing.

I highly recommend this movie to others who enjoy excellent Australian cinema, and to those who have been disappointed by a lot of recent films that have underwhelmed.

Walking On Water is about the way people deal with grief. It's also about death with dignity, in that attempting to provide just that for a friend is what causes most grief for the main characters.

When Gavin has lived as long as he can in relative dignity with HIV/AIDS, his live-in friends call for his family to come from South Australia to be at his bedside in Sydney.

A traumatic, rather than peaceful death adds to the stress of the surviving friends and family as they try to sort out their lives after enduring 18 months of increasingly intense pressure.

Charles and Anna are long time friends of Gavin. Charles has been working as full-time carer and fellow housemate Anna was also Gavin's business partner.

Judi Farr is rock solid and very impressive as the loving mum who lost her son to far off Sydney many years earlier. She has as much need to grieve as the others but is being distanced by Anna.

Charles struggles to maintain his sense of purpose and his relationship with boyfriend Frank, while Anna takes full advantage of opportunities to feel wanted.

It's an intense and beautiful film with a superb soundtrack and real life characters. There is ample dark humour to add relief and overall it is definitely more food for thought than depressing, as we follow the characters' search for resolution.

We will all have to learn to deal with grief. Hopefully we can take up the offer made at the start of the film: `Does anyone need counseling?'

WALKING ON WATER is disturbing in the best sense of the word: it calls forth a sense of identification with each of the major characters in this story and makes us uncomfortable while providing avenues for insight and change. Were that all movies had the emotional and spiritual impact of this fine film written by Roger Monk and directed newcomer Tony Ayres.

The setting is Sydney, Australia and the mood is established by cinematographer Robert Humphreys' panoramas of the ocean and inlets and coastlines surrounding this city. Gavin (David Bonney) is dying with AIDS and has been attended in his home by his friend and business partner Anna (Maria Theodorakis) and caregiver Charlie (Vince Colosimo) and Charlie's lover Frank (Nicholas Bishop). It is Gavin's wish to die with dignity and when the time comes for the assisted suicide, the designated doctor Dr Simms (Timothy Jones) administers IV morphine while Gavin is surrounded by his extended family as well as his brother Simon (Nathaniel Dean) and wife Kate (Anna Lisa Phillips) and his mother (Judi Farr). The euthanasia does not seem to be working and in desperation Charlie places a plastic bag over Gavin's head to hasten the requested death - a deed that will haunt Charlie and the rest at the bedside.

Anna remains apparently calm in the immediate aftermath, tending to the 'funeral' arrangements according to Gavin's requests. Gavin's mother appears to want to make up for years of distance by interceding in the plans and the will, but Anna is strong and the service goes as planned. After the funeral the mother and Simon's wife leave to return to their home away form Sydney, leaving Simon to remain until Gavin's ashes are ready for transport. In this 'home' things begin to disintegrate: Charlie attempts to evade his guilt about his final assistance by anesthetizing himself with morphine elixir, cocaine, alcohol and barhopping. His behavior further distances his lover Frank and the latter ends the relationship. Anna finds emotional outlet in placing demands on Charlie and eventually sublimates her loss by escaping into physical encounters with Simon, taking him to bed and to bars and to drugs all of which eventually awaken Simon to his infidelity to Kate and results in his leaving the 'home'.

The climax of the film is the confrontation of those who were closest to Gavin - Anna and Charlie - who in despair vent their rage so intimately associated with the death of a loved one and search for a path of recovery. It is this means of healing that comprises the ending of this richly tender film.

Actors Vince Colosimo and Maria Theodorakis are exceptionally fine in their roles and the supporting cast is homogeneously fine. Judi Farr gives one of those cameos that breathes 'best supporting actress'! The concept of how extended families intertwine with genetic families in times of stress is as well shown in this film as any in memory. One criticism: much of the excellent script is lost to poor sound editing, to the good but overly loud music, and most important to the lack of English subtitles for those of us who are not intimately familiar with the varying Australian accents! Watch this film twice and with trained ears you'll appreciate it even more. Grady Harp