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OPAL DREAM
Directed by: Peter Cattaneo.
Produced by: Lizie Gower, Nick Morris & Emile Sherman.
Written by: Cattaneo, Ben Rice &Phil Traill; from the novel Pobby and Dingan by Rice.
Director of Photography: Robert Humphreys.
Edited by: Jim Clark & Nicolas Gaster.
Music by: Dario Marianelli.
Released by: Strand Releasing.
Country of Origin: Australia/UK. 85 Min. Rated PG.
With: Vince Colosimo, Jacqueline McKenzie, Christian Byers, & Sapphire Boyce.

“So long as there’s opal to be found, there’s something to dream about,” which explains why a passionate father (Vince Colosimo) has recently uprooted his family to follow his obsession all the way from Melbourne: to hit in the dusty heart of the opal mining outback that one big strike that will have them all “sitting in clover.”

In their very naturalistic film debuts, Christian Byers as 12-year-old Ashmol and ethereal Sapphire Boyce as his nine-year old sister Kellyanne are wonderfully adept at drawing us into their points of view as kids and warring siblings. Ashmol narrates, a bit superfluously, while riding around town on his bicycle. You don’t need to be told his sister has imaginary friends as we see her set up a dainty tea party for them in her play house inside a decorated rusty old van. Her involvement with her invisible friends, Pobby and Dingan, isolate her from other kids at school. She even enters one in the Opal Princess competition, an amusing twist on Little Miss Sunshine.

Her father cooks up a scheme to lose these friends, but the family is all shocked that he has accidentally been more successful than he intended in separating her from her playmates. Charm leads into poignancy, as the distraught Kellyanne mysteriously pines away, only perking up to provide wonderfully detailed descriptions of Pobby and Dingan for flyers that her now loyal brother determinedly posts all around town, surprising a sympathetic shop owner, who remarks, “That’s not how I imagined them at all.” Noting they are “very quiet,” he offers a reward for finding them.

The family’s frantic efforts to appease their little girl accidentally setoff accusations of ratting, the cardinal sin of poaching on another’s mining claim, causing escalating friction between the family and the rest of the town, culminating in a court hearing reminiscent of Miracle on 34th Street. With no CGI or special effects other than a few lollipop wrappers, an opal, and the fervor of the startlingly weakened Kellyanne, first her brother and then, one by one, the townspeople come to believe in the invisible Pobby and Dingan, just as in Harvey, leading to an unusual funeral that should leave no one untouched. The more heartwarming ending for the film over the book is well justified by its more emotional emphasis on family and faith in the unseen.

Director Peter Cattaneo demonstrated in The Full Monty how adept he was at crossing working-class blokes with incongruous feminine culture. Here, the domestic crisis takes on more punch than just humor as it sets off escalating tensions in a macho environment, introducing the audience to an unusual slice of Australian life filled with Dickensian characters, including eccentric Robert Menzies as an opal polisher and other colorful old codgers. The film was shot in the moonscape town of Coober Pedy, South Australia, which was the post-apocalypse setting for Mad Max, and is redolent with Australian slang and customs, including a very sweaty Christmas and Boxing Day with bathing suit costumes and sunglasses. Dario Marianelli’s old timey-tinged score seems to refer to beloved Down Under country musician Slim Dusty. The almost too blanched-out cinematography of Robert Humphreys emphasizes the hot sun and ubiquitous dust, in what the director calls a “white heat” look.

Children’s drawings of imaginary friends adorably illustrate the closing credits, as Cattaneo was inspired by the universality of Marjorie Taylor’s book Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them. This delightful film is for people of all ages who clap to revive Peter Pan's Tinkerbelle. Nora Lee Mandel
November 17, 2006