Journey Among Women

In the 70s, there was a bit of an obsession with the new permissiveness in cinema and the revelation of nudity, evidenced by such schlocky pictures like Alvin Purple, Libido and Barry Mckenzie and whilst Journey Amoung Women inadvertently was relegated to that genre due to its full frontal nudity, it however is a film with form, substance and most importantly, even disregarding the basic penal storyline, is a celebration of women. Its lyrical, beautifully photographed but primitive to look at and must be considered a milestone of Australian cinema. Think of what English punk band The Slits would carve out of creating a civilisation for themselves and you get the picture. A liberating and essential time capsule.

Journey Among Women was a bold experiment in storytelling about women who seek liberation in colonial society which treated women as slaves. It was undertaken by a collective of brave and talented women . The script was written by Dianne Fuller. In accord with feminist principles of the time - the women sought control of the way their characters were depicted in the film. The film was extended by improvisation by the actors. Though it is a film of it's time and may appear to be dated , it is a rare instance of women empowering themselves in the film making process in a way which has rarely been repeated.

It remains a unique film in the history of Australian film making.

According to the pre-release publicity in Australia, this movie was made by a feminist collective who had no script to follow, preferring to make up the dialog as they went along. It made me ashamed to be a feminist. The acting and dialog were painfully awkward. So the plot is about a bunch of young female convicts dumped in the penal colony in Sydney in the 1780s. They live in squalor and are periodically raped by evil guards. They break out and run away to "the bush" to live an idyllic existence with the aborigines. It gets very anachronistic during this part of the movie.

The women live in squalor behind bars in an unknown wilderness, repeatedly raped by drunken male soldiers who treat them like their only source of amusement. The wife of one of the soldiers helps them to escape, which they do, and meet a "savage", or young Aboriginal woman. With remarkable ease they take to the bush like that's where they belong: away from the cold, hard "civilisation" of their ignorant male captors.

Oh, and they spend most of the time either naked or topless, which people still make a big deal out of, as if we don't live in a world where nakedness is available to us at a click of a button. And as if most of the women in the movie aren't much to look at anyway.

So it's easy to see that this is some kind of feminist parable. But it seems to lack a point. It's certainly not entertaining to watch. The beginning is murky and gruelling and I got the feeling the movie wasn't going to go anywhere. It did go somewhere, into simplistic, heavy handed parable mode. I just didn't get what it was trying to say.

It's also very poorly shot, and, typically for an exploitation movie (which is what this is, feminist claptrap notwithstanding) none of the characters are differentiated.

It's been years since I saw this film. BRAVO network used to show it fairly regularly back in the early 80's. Yes, it is somewhat silly at times, but it held my attention from start to "Weekend"-style finish. Basically good fun. A 6 or 7 out of 10.