Director: Robert Connolly
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Radha Mitchell, Ilsa Fogg, Liz Alexander, Eric Bana, Eddie Baroo, Clarence Ryan, Ariel Donoghue, Albert Mwangi, Pedrea Jackson
Distributor: Roadshow
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Mild themes

Tim Winton story of the West Australian coast – centring around a mother and daughter, underwater explorations, and a fight to save the environment.

A fine Australian drama from a novel by Tim Winton, it is a film for the whole family, current in its concern about the environment, especially Australia’s waters.

Winton is the novelist of Western Australia, many of his stories taking place on the coast, the towns, the beaches, the waters and fishing, the range of sea creatures from small fish to giant whales (who do make some spectacular appearances at the end of the film).

There is a great deal of underwater photography throughout the film, but especially in the opening credits, inviting the audience into the depths, the extraordinary world of motion and colour, fish, small and large, the coral, the vegetation. For audiences who really enjoy this kind of photography, Blueback is something of a treat.

This is the story of a mother and daughter, Dora and Abby.

We are first introduced to the older Abby (Wasikowska), a marine biologist working on the Barrier Reef. She receives a phone call to say that her mother Dora (Mitchell) has had a stroke and she immediately flies home. While Abby’s response to her mother’s stroke is the central part of the film in the present, the main part of the action is in flashbacks, first of all to Dora with her daughter, aged eight, urging her to her first dive, throwing a ring overboard with Abby going down to retrieve it. There are many other flashbacks to this period in Abby’s life. However, the main flashbacks are to Abby when she is 15, skilled in diving, involved in protests against beach developments and tourism in their town. And she has to make decisions about her further education – and the moving away from home and her mother.

We respond to the relationship between mother and daughter, with Donaohue as Abby aged eight and Fogg as the teenaged Abby.

There is an extraordinary vitality in the performance by Mitchell as Dora, a strong-minded widow, devoted to her daughter, encouraging her in her water activities and investigations, her sketches of the creatures that she discovers. But Dora is also involved in confronting the developers, not against sabotage, and making her case to the town council, enhanced by Abby’s drawings. In many ways, Dora is the centre and life of the film.

There is a welcome performance by Eric Bana as Macka, captain of the ship, a bit shady at times in his dealings, but a warm friend. There are also the teachers and school children of the town, and Abby’s strong friendship with the young Indigenous boy Briggs (Ryan).

Alexander plays Dora silenced by the stroke, Abby devoted to her, friends from the town, and Dora being encouraged to some further movement, even to speak – and a moving sequence at the end, imaginatively, Dora affirming Abby and her, career, contribution to marine science.

(With its great appeal to the female audience, one can imagine that girls at school may well be considering science and marine biology as a career choice.)

Robert Connolly has contributed considerably to Australian cinema with such films as Three Dollars, Balibo, Paper Planes, The Turning, The Dry and its sequel, Force of Nature.