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TimTamSam
Reviews
Walkabout (1971)
Skip it.. just skip it!
Spoilers!
After hearing so many good things about this movie, and also finding out that just about every review I could find on it gave it glowing remarks, I anticipated seeing the director's cut of this movie on DVD.
I mean, what wasn't to like? Jenny Agutter (sic), a beautiful actress also from Logan's Run & American Werewolf in London... David Gulpilil who you can see in the US in Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Unfortunately I came away very disappointed. Part of me could not appreciate the style that Roeg filmed it. It's one of those movies that you hear was groundbreaking at the time, but watching it 30 years later, you feel it just didn't age well.
I'll give it this.. the stars of the movie did a fine job, and as I read once, it was almost like they were not acting..
However...
Watching the movie, there are many many many many cuts away from the primaries, to see closeups of ants, slugs, bees, snakes, lizards, scorpions, etc.. etc.. etc.. After the 40th time, I actually said out loud "Okay.. I GET IT! THEY ARE IN THE OUTBACK!!" As if all the sand, dirt and isolation DIDNT already give that away.
What I found most odd was what the professional reviewers called the 'sexual tension.' Let me start by saying Im no prude, nor am I always against your gratuitous nudity, but... the camera just seemed to love Jenny's crotch, and undies.. even before they came across the Aboriginal boy and the 'tension'. At the watering hole, it made special point of watching her put her undies back on.
Later you have several other nude scenes, including through the water crotch scenes of Jenny as she just, for whatever reason, decides to take a nude swim in a pond.. a scene where she is changing, or just sitting around an abandoned farm house topless when she finds out the aboriginal boy is watching and quickly puts her top back on. To the end where the movie where she flashes back to this time later in live when the three kids decided to have a nice nude swim together.
Again, she's supposed to be like 15 years old. I felt like Pete Townshend, and that the cops were going to bust me for just watching this.