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Australia 1990
Directed by
George Ogilvie
92 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
2.5 stars

The Crossing

George Ogilvie's teen drama set in small town Australia in the late 1950s (it was filmed in and around Junee in New South Wales) is a good-looking film distinguished by the director's striking visual flair but dramatically it fails to convince.

Top billing Russell Crowe is for the most part effective although his teariness in the latter part of the film appears incongruous with the tough guy persona he has hitherto projected, even if one takes that as a pose.  Opposite him, however, Robert Mammone, an actor who has largely worked in television since, is undoubtedly handsome but an indifferent counterpoint whilst Danielle Spencer as the girl they are both smitten with lacks presence (Crowe eventually married her in real life), not to mention that all three seem too old to play teenagers in love.

The 2-guys-and-1-gal scenario is a common one and under Ogilvie's often heavy-handed direction this unfolds in a familiar way (often seeming stylistically over-indebted to American examples of the genre) to the accompaniment of an intrusive and oddly anachronistic score by Martin Armiger but never manages to pull off an dramatically effective resolution to the emotional maelstrom of teen angst and triangulated love that it posits.

 

 

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