Playing Beattie Bow

I’ve not read the Ruth Park novel of the same name on which this film is based but I know that she is highly regarded in some quarters and I can imagine that as a novel this time-travelling story might be quite engaging. This screen adaptation, however,  is anything but.

Abigail (Imogen Annesley) is a teenager living in Sydney’s Rocks area in the 1980s. Through the agency of her little sister's play-acting games, she encounters Beattie Bow, a poor young Irish girl who lived in the same area in the 1870s, and travels back in time with her, where she discovers that she has an important task to fulfill before she returns to the present.

Had this been approached as a children’s film it might have worked well but it was not and under Crombie’s characteristically unsubtle direction it makes for a painful experience particularly as his cast are uniformly pedestrian when they are not outright ham-fisted. In the lead Imogen Annesley is an attractive screen presence but in her first screen role lacking the acting skill to carry off the lead. Much the same can be said of Peter Phelps as the principal male and he has the further burden of an Irish accent. Of the rest of the cast, the less said the better.Then there's the kitschy '80s production values complete with tinkling synthesiser score and the awful wardrobe choices that are complemented by contributions of the equally garish work of the hair and make-up departments.

The Rocks c.1870 were recreated quite effectively on a disused industrial estate in South Australia and give us the sense of a seedy, violent world apart. Sadly Crombie’s stilted direction and Peter Gawler’s laboured script leaves little else to recommend and it is no surprise that Crombie, who is best known for the Australian film renaissance classic, Caddie (1976), has worked almost entirely in television since.

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