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Looking for Grace (2006)

In my year recap for 2016, I listed Looking for Grace (2016) as the fifth best Australian release of that year, writing:  

Odessa Young delivered two superb breakout performances in 2016, in Simon Stone’s ornate The Daughter and Sue Brooks’ scrappier Looking for Grace. I’m not sure Looking for Grace, released on Australia Day, will make too many top five lists for 2016 – it mightn’t even make Odessa Young’s top five – but I was won over by the film’s playful structure, its peculiar grace notes (pun intended), Young’s aforementioned work, and a great neurotic turn from Richard Roxburgh.

Given I remembered very little of the film before this rewatch, it’s possible I did not see very many new Australian films in 2016, hence competition was lean; or have seen far too many films since 2016, hence my strained recollection; or criticism and opinion are subjective not just to individuals but to seasons of life and, indeed, the very day of the week someone pens their best of the year rankings. 

Looking for Grace watch #2 is an embarrassment neither to my younger self nor director Sue Brooks, though my praise remains somewhat guarded. The plot revolves around the disappearance of teenager Grace (Odessa Young) with $7,000 cash from her father’s safe. The film unfolds in five sections told from the vantage points of different characters: Grace herself, truck driver Bruce (Myles Pollard), detective Tom (Terry Norris), mother Denise (Radha Mitchell), and father Dan (Richard Roxburgh), with ellipses/abridged moments in each section for scenes and beats that are played out in full elsewhere. 

Like Australia Day the following year, Looking for Grace was released with a modicum of commercially-minded patriotism on Australia Day, a tactic that probably wouldn’t float politically seven years later. But the film showcases to very good effect the colours and textures of the Australian landscape, specifically Western Australia, as did Brooks’ more celebrated (and I would say overrated) Japanese Story. It also conveys a feel for the rural towns, motels, diners, and fuel stations peppering and domesticating said landscape from the transactional perspectives of sojourners passing through. The actors are engaging—particularly Young and Roxburgh—and some uncomfortable hare’s-breath-shy-of-dark situational comedy is milked from proceedings, making the film closer tonally to Brooks’ earlier Road to Nhill. However, the film’s final fifteen minutes, while not eroding the good work of the preceding 85, takes a disappointing turn, falling prey to the fashionable nihilism of so many contemporary Australian features. 

Ben 

  

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