The Boy Who Had Everything

This under-rated coming-of-age drama, penned by director Stephen Wallace, has Jason Connery (son of Sean) as John Kirkland, a troubled young man from a well-to-do background attending his first year as a boarder at Sydney University. Set in the early 60s when Australia under Menzies aped the Mother Country, John is unable to take the public school bastardization handed out by the senior boarders while at home his divorced mother (Diane Cilento, Connery's real life mother), for whom he has a more than casual affection, has a drinking problem. Added to this, his girlfriend (Laura Williams) is too straight-laced for John's lust for life.

Although presumably Wallace has exaggerated the psuedo-Englishness of university college life of the times and many of the support cast seem a tad too old for their roles, not to mention that having such a morose individual as the central figure probably reduces the entertainment quotient, this film is a largely convincing work in it own terms. Diane Cilento is believable as the good-natured layabout of a mother and if her son lacks the whimsical charm of Noah Taylor in Flirting (1990) which deals with related subject matter, he nevertheless convincingly portrays his character's sensitivities.

Despite the occasional lapse The Boy Who Had Everything is an engaging film that probably has been neglected because it lacks the usual signifiers of the Australian historical drama.

 

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