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Australia 1985
Directed by
Rolf De Heer
78 minutes
Rated G

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
2 stars

Tail Of A Tiger

Rolf De Heer’s first film is an inauspicious beginning to what has turned out to be a very substantial career. Tail Of A Tiger is a kid’s film that could have been directed by virtually anyone reasonably proficient with the state of Australian film-making in the mid-80s (one of the tenets of which was “stick in the Sydney Harbour Bridge”).The story concerns a nerdy kid, Orville (Grant Navin, who, understandably has never been heard of since), who wants to be accepted into a group of kids who fly remote-controlled airplane. They, of course, won’t have a bar of him but then he stumbles across a REAL Tiger Moth and its owner, Harry (Gordon Poole, who for trivia buffs, turned up in Greg Mclean’s Wolf Creek). With Harry and some of his mates, Orville (why, oh why?) fixes up the plane and goes from zero to hero.

Looking at the film today one is principally stuck by how much Australia has changed socially in 25 years. Based on “an original work” by Peter Hubbard, the kids and the setting is rooted in a 1930s “Ginger Meggs” world - inner urban, white, working class - a far cry from the polyglot social reality of today. And in these infinitely more sophisticated days of Ipods, Youtube, Instagram etc etc, the idea of kids building balsa wood planes or playing outside in abandoned factory site is positively quaint. As a social document Tail Of A Tiger has some value but few kids are likely to find this even marginally relevant to them today. Some would well say, more's the pity.

 

 

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