Celia

As a film lover who immigrated to Australia, I've invested a fair bit of effort in seeking out Aussie films that aren't well known abroad, from the popular like 'The Castle' and 'Storm Boy' to Ozploitation like 'Razorback' and 'Next of Kin' to cult classics like 'Wake in Fright' and 'Bad Boy Bubby'. Yet after many years here, I'd never heard of 'Celia' until I saw it pop up on the Arrow site. What a glorious gem to uncover!

It's almost best to go into this film knowing nothing, because it's an extremely difficult one to classify. While there are horror elements, it's most definitely not a horror film. It's probably best described as a period coming of age drama with fantasy elements. But it's not a kids' film-it's very dark.

It's also very hard to pin a date on this film, as it looks like it could have been shot in the '70s or last year, a testament to the quality of the director and crew. The photography, the art direction, the writing and acting are all top shelf. Serious craft here.

I won't give away the story, other than the top-line: It's about a girl named Celia with an active imagination growing up in fifties Cold War Australia and the politics of the time play into the general anxiety of the film.

All you really need to know is, it's a well-crafted film and completely entrancing. It's playful and joyful and sad and dark. The more films I watch, the more I appreciate films that are unlike any other film out there. This is one of them.

CELIA is an interesting film. Set in the 1950s, during the big, Australian rabbit plague, it's about the little girl of the title (Rebecca Smart), who has difficulty with a group of kids in her school. When a new family moves in nearby, Celia befriends the children. Trouble brews when she discovers that her pet rabbit has been taken away due to a recent edict.

With this movie, it's all about the finale, which is quite an unexpected shocker. It packs a punch, and turns what was mostly a drama with political aspects, into a horror story. Ms. Smart is exceptional in her highly-imaginative / disturbed role.

A one-of-a-kind gem...

Celia is a spirited 9 year old girl with a vivid imagination.

Reeling from the death of her beloved grandmother, she seeks out the company of her new neighbours, The Tanners - a warm and loving family harbouring a secret.

Set in an Australian suburb in the late 1950's, the film tackles the prevailing social issues of the time including the "red scare" and the "rabbit pestilence", drawing a parallel between the two.

The film is essentially a drama, but with an added element of dark fantasy (which, although an interesting idea, is used inconsistently and often feels out of place).

But as a coming of age story, Celia is a triumph - an honest and unvarnished exploration of the trials and tribulations of childhood, featuring an astonishing performance by Rebecca Smart in the titular role.

Celia is a 9 year old girl with a lot of imagination. She lives with her family in South Australia in the fifties. She has a strong will, lots of charm and wit. Her family are communists, which makes them kind of outcasts in the society, and Celia has to fight mobbing schoolmates as well as discriminating teachers. She manages to do that very well. All this gives a rather frank and funny description of childhood problems, and Rebecca Smart plays her part extremely well. But Celia is not just a charming kid - when she hates, she really hates. And when she fantasizes about mysterious evil animals, she can't quite distinguish fantasy from reality. Which might seem rather normal, but Celia lives in a house, where a loaded gun is available... This movie is very entertaining, giving a varied picture of growing-up - and one can really feel the emotions and confusions, which is a part of being nine years old. At times the film becomes perhaps a bit too confusing - it can be quite difficult to follow the girls vivid imagination. But I'll guess, you have the same problem in the real world...

In summer, 2003, I took a class about Australian cinema. We watched films like "Walkabout", "Gallipoli" and "Rabbit-Proof Fence"; it might have thrown a wrench in the works had we watched "Celia". At the video/DVD store, I found it under the horror section, but it's only a horror flick in the loosest terms. The movie deals with a nine-year-old girl (Rebecca Smart) in 1950s Australia whose amorality and alienation from society drive her to complete madness; I think that that was the plot. Certainly it's ugly what Celia does, but seeing what the adults around her are like, I felt that I had no choice except to root for Celia.

The historical context involves the Cold War and the government's efforts to stop the rabbit infestation. As people tell Celia not to fraternize with children of communists, she grows more and more disenchanted with the world around her - after all, friends are supposed to be friends no matter what the parents' political activity. But when a cop takes away her pet rabbit, she really gets nasty (it also shows that the rabbit-proof fence that lent its name to the 2002 movie clearly didn't work in holding back the leporid plague).

So how to interpret this movie? It looks at face value like one of the many instances of a seemingly cute girl having a not so cute side (think "The Bad Seed"). One might say that the rabbits play a role similar to the ones in "Night of the Lepus" and "Donnie Darko", even though Celia's rabbit doesn't do anything. I guess that it's worth seeing, if only once.