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SOMERSAULT
Directed & Written by: Cate Shortland.
Produced by: Anthony Anderson.
Director of Photography: Robert Humphreys.
Edited by: Scott Gray.
Music by: Decoder Ring.
Released by: Magnolia.
Country of Origin: Australia. 106 min. Not Rated.
With: Abbie Cornish, Sam Worthington, Lynette Curran, Erik Thomson & Hollie Andrew.

Spinning wheels is more like it. Australian teenager Heidi (the soft-edged Abbie Cornish) is a mother’s nightmare: an impulsive 16-year-old who has a defined herself based on sex, which she uses to barter for everything from companionship to a roof over her head. With stringy blond hair parted in the middle, she’s a cross between an introverted Britney Spears and Drew Barrymore at her most naively hopeful.

Not nearly as old fashion as her name, Heidi runs away from home after her mother catches her making out with mom’s nude boyfriend. Too ashamed to face her stunned mother, Heidi takes a bus into the interior armed with the name and phone number of a former one-night stand. She does call him, but he tells her never to call again and hangs up.

Any confidence she has lies in her looks. Stranded in a mountain resort off-season, she knowingly stares down an older man, who’s been eyeing her in his parked car. She approaches him, but stops when a woman, oblivious to the potential pick-up, enters the car. As an alternative, Heidi goes to the local bar, loads up on liquor, and finds a place to stay for the night, mechanically assuming the position.

Another one-night stand develops into a tentative relationship, with Joe, a post-college slacker who doesn’t share Heidi’s sense of self-awareness (no matter how limited). She shortly finds a room to rent and a job at the local service station, quickly and determinedly setting down roots. One of Heidi’s few moments of pride is staring at her reflection, wearing her new employee name tag, during a break mopping the bathroom floor. But the relationship that may mean more to her, however, is the one she develops with an aloof but slowly thawing coworker, and most importantly, her protective landlord.

The sparse dialogue and director Cate Shortland’s equivocal treatment of Heidi clear the film from any Linda Blair-teenager-in-trouble moralizing, and the cinematography adds a wide-eyed wonderment to the film that’s almost surreal. There’s not a slo-mo opportunity that Shortland doesn’t pass up: a nighttime shot of Heidi lowering her head to a flowing water fountain, gorgeously backlit by city lights; or a night out dancing at a bar, though many of these scenes pad the film by a good 5-10 minutes. Despite the poetic but obvious directorial touches, it’s the darker episodes that are more effective, unblinkingly explicit in the mode of other female directors, such as La Petite Jérusalem’s Karin Albou or the cynical Catherine Breillat, though Shortland is much more forgiving toward her characters. It’s during these moments of tension – a ride home which takes an ominous detour or a night of partying that spins out of control – when this slender tale could go in any direction. Based on her painfully vulnerable performance, don’t be surprised when the promising Cornish joins Hollywood’s pool of Aussie ex-pats. Kent Turner
April 21, 2006