Turtle Beach

Turtle Beach is an odd film, a lot of trouble having gone into making what is too blandly glossy to convince as either a social conscience tract, which it mainly is, or a steamy pot-boiler, of which there are many traces.

Reminiscent of the '80s interest in Asian politics seen in such efforts as The Year Of Living Dangerously and Far East (both 1982) and based on the novel of the same name by Blanche D' Alpuget, Turtle Beach takes as its setting the refugee crisis in Malaysia in the 1970s, teaming crusading journalist Greta Scacchi with local activist Joan Chen as they try to save the Vietnamese boat people from the murderous wrath of the Malays. Mixed up in this material is the usual romantic liaison, this time between Scacchi (a single mum who has left her children in Sydney) and a local businessman (Art Malik,who would play the crazed Arab terrorist in True Lies, the following year). Chen's Minou is, on the other hand, whilst being a single mum who has left her children behind in Vietnam, is a former prostitute and, the film seems to suggest, one not averse to Sapphic dalliance, given the right incentive, which Scacchi, broad Australian accent aside, certainly is. Jack Thompson also figures in typical no-nonsense mode, as a bureaucrat having an affair with one of the refugees.

All this material is delivered with dutiful predictability and little credibility, neither Ann Turner's script and Stephen Wallace's direction demonstrating much flair in bringing together the multi-layered narrative, and sometimes completely failing to do so (the reunion between Minou and her children being a striking case in point). How much blame for this should be laid at either's door is questionable. Wallace was apparently removed from the project during post-production and several new scenes were shot, some by Bruce Beresford, and an additional writer brought in, resulting in some noticeable over-dubbing of dialogue, whilst the score was also re-written. Whether all considerable effort made the film better or worse is unknown but the end result is a film that smothers its subject-matter with a blanket of narrative conventionality.

 

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