Awesome Movie

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This drama about a teen runaway rarely moves beyond clichés. Cornish is good if somewhat bland as the runaway who desperately seeks a man who'll take of her. Worthington is disappointing as a man Cornish meets. Not only does it seem like he's simply reading his lines, but his delivery is so rapid that it's hard to understand him, given his Australian accent. His character here is confusing. Although he's cool to Cornish's overtures, he gets angry when she shacks up with other guys. He's also confused about his sexual orientation. This is the first feature film of writer-director Shortland, and she seems unsure of herself.

Like last year's Bright Star, Somersault sees the luminous Abbie Cornish steal every scene in a neatly framed, well-meaning, but vapid love story. This Heidi is no Fanny though; she's shy and desperate to feel wanted, and emotional security above romance is the order of the day. She obviously sees something similarly fragile in Sam Worthington's Joe. It's just a pity that Worthington the actor hasn't the subtlety to convince us of this hidden sensitivity; his shifts in mood come across as minor Hulk moments. He even has a Lou Ferrigno mullet.The plotting itself is fine, but the dialogue is often flat and feels very 'written': lots of unlikely, monosyllabic, stabbing exchanges, which tend to undermine the chilly rawness of the film's photography and themes.There's a bleak spine of truth running through Cate Shortland's debut feature, and many well-observed scenes. But ultimately it comes off as a kind of STI-free rendition of Lilya-4-Ever.

Beyond the aesthetically beautiful nature of this movie lies a story that is compelling in its realistic portrayal of young love and loneliness. The story moves along slowly, but I felt that this only added to the credibility of the plot, as most life situations aren't jam-packed with intense drama. The characters are flawed and complex - the main character Heidi is at once naive and youthful, and grown-up and savvy. The story details are slowly inserted, sometimes just through imagery - leaving the viewer to assume much of the back story - the movie does not feel contrived because you aren't being told every small detail and how the director wants you to judge each character. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone that enjoys artistic camera angles, realistic characters and situations, and doesn't mind slowing down to enjoy a good story.

"Somersault" is a fresh spin on the in-over-their heads teenager movie, particularly the mixed-up city girl confusing the well-meaning country boy sub-genre. It is a sophisticated look at the motivations and resourcefulness of a teen age runaway. In her debut feature, writer/director Cate Shortland poignantly captures a girl's search for love and independence through sex. It isn't often that we see a film about tantalizing jail-bait from the girl's perspective. The town settings from Canberra to Jindabyne in New South Wales are unusual for Australian films we usually get to see in the U.S., providing an unusual meeting place for cold-weather tourists, the poor in their service industry, and farmers in from cattle stations.Abbie Cornish is a marvel in the central role. Looking startlingly like the young Nicole Kidman from her early Australian movies such as "Flirting", she morphs from coltish girl to sexual aggressor, even as it's clear she doesn't understand what she's getting herself into by thinking she can live out her fantasy in following one guy after another who she has met on the road. With the glimpses we get of her tumultuous inner world through a childish diary, "Heidi"s naiveté is palpably painful as Cornish projects her at different times in the film as being the character's actual 16 or pretending to be 20 when she thinks she can use sex as a manipulable tool without realizing what creepy situations can result. The subtlety of her performance extends to how differently she relates to men than women, particularly as she keeps seeking out mother figures. Sam Worthington is heartbreakingly sweet as equally naive, somewhat older "Joe", who clumsily becomes her protector and something more. I wasn't clear, though, about his back story with issues in his past (there's a lot of family secrets all around). The film also comments on bloke culture, including the ambiguous touches of homo-eroticism in male bonding.The scenes between these two marginalized young people are engrossing with their attraction and hesitation, as they clumsily imitate adult behavior that they can't really handle. Bouncing between maturity and immaturity, tenderness and aggression, they have enough trouble expressing and understanding their feelings without adding sex into the mixture.A side story with an autistic child leads to a way too didactic discussion about empathy and emotions, with flash cards no less.The cinematography had a lovely blue haze, but used fuzzy focus too often. I had some difficulty understanding the male dialogue among thick accents and low sound projection in the Time Square Theater, compounded by the restless male audience, up and down, in and out, slamming doors, who seemed mostly attracted to the film by Cornish's nude scenes. This film is a creative contrast to American indie films that tend to see young women on the cusp of adulthood more as victims as they experiment with their sexual power, such as "Blue Car" or "Hard Candy", or in commercial fare as innocents, like "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants", let alone male fantasy objects as in "American Beauty". A spate of recent non-American directors have focused on their impact on males, such as in "The Holy Girl (La Niña santa)", "À Tout de Suite (Right Now)", and "Lila Says (Lila dit ça)", with varying degrees of the success of this film in capturing their girl/woman confusion.