At the end of the 1980s, an Australian ‘new wave’ cinema started to emerge which would result in some of the best films and most promising directors of the period. And if the true star of that movement was Jane Campion, who released Sweetie in 1989, that same year heralded the arrival of a talent equally as interesting in the form of Ann Turner and her debut film, Celia.
On the surface, it’s a film about a young girl in 1950s rural Australia navigating a period in her life between the innocence and fantasy of childhood and the realities of becoming an adult. But there’s more going on. A lot more.
Celia, beautifully played by Rebecca Smart, lives in a conservative town with her conservative parents. As the film begins, her grandmother dies, a woman with a bookshelf suggesting she’d been something of a political rebel in her younger days, and Celia loses the one person she really connects with. When a family move in next door, they welcome Celia into their home, one which is a lot freer and less stuffy than her own. But the family are communists and, in 1950s Australia, that’s not a good thing to be.
At the same time, the government, dealing with a rural farming crisis and a plague of rabbits, ban pet rabbits too and Celia’s beloved Mergatruyd gets taken away.
These traumatic, political, grown-up things have a profound impact on the imaginative child, as she combats rivalry and bullying from other kids, a love/hate relationship with her father and monstrous creatures called Hobyahs which may or may not be just in her own mind…
Celia is a brilliant film. It expertly examines the horrors and confusion, the innocence and joy of being a child whilst being all too aware that becoming a grown-up doesn’t solve all of your problems. Never heavy-handed, Turner’s deft writing and direction cleverly weaves the personal and political with such a light hand and with such skill, always keeping the focus very much from the point of view of young Celia.
Beneath it all lies a deeply troubling period of Australian history, the plague of rabbits and subsequent botched handling of that by the government providing a perfect metaphor for those pesky lefties ruffling those 1950s Conservative feathers.
On Blu-ray for the first time, Celia looks glorious, the transfer providing the quality upgrade the film deserves. There’s an interview with Turner lifted from the 2009 DVD release, but a new documentary sees her looking in-depth at the political landscape that underpinned the making of the film. It’s fascinating and lovely to see someone revisiting something they made over 30 years ago of which they are deservedly proud. A 2021 recording from a film convention eulogises the film too, so the extras are pretty good.
Campion went on from her success in 1989 to make classics like The Piano and it’s hard not to feel robbed of what else we might have had from Turner, whose career took a different path to that of her more celebrated contemporary. On the evidence of her stunning debut, Celia, Ann Turner should have continued to be one of the greats.
