Walking on Water

Walking On Water is about the way people deal with grief. It's also about death with dignity, in that attempting to provide just that for a friend is what causes most grief for the main characters.

When Gavin has lived as long as he can in relative dignity with HIV/AIDS, his live-in friends call for his family to come from South Australia to be at his bedside in Sydney.

A traumatic, rather than peaceful death adds to the stress of the surviving friends and family as they try to sort out their lives after enduring 18 months of increasingly intense pressure.

Charles and Anna are long time friends of Gavin. Charles has been working as full-time carer and fellow housemate Anna was also Gavin's business partner.

Judi Farr is rock solid and very impressive as the loving mum who lost her son to far off Sydney many years earlier. She has as much need to grieve as the others but is being distanced by Anna.

Charles struggles to maintain his sense of purpose and his relationship with boyfriend Frank, while Anna takes full advantage of opportunities to feel wanted.

It's an intense and beautiful film with a superb soundtrack and real life characters. There is ample dark humour to add relief and overall it is definitely more food for thought than depressing, as we follow the characters' search for resolution.

We will all have to learn to deal with grief. Hopefully we can take up the offer made at the start of the film: `Does anyone need counseling?'