RABBIT PROOF FENCE
Directed by: Phillip Noyce.
Produced by: Noyce & Christine Olsen.
Written by: Olsen, based on the book by Doris Pilkington Garimara.
Director of Photography: Christopher Doyle.
Edited by: John Scott & Veronika Jenet.
Music by: Peter Gabriel.
Released by: Miramax.
Country of Origin: Australia. 94 min. Rated: PG.
With: Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan & Kenneth Branagh.
DVD Features: Commentary by: Noyce, Gabriel, Branagh, Olsen and Garimara. Additional Footage: Documentary, "Following The Rabbit-Proof Fence".

A rarity, an intelligent film for adults and children. Preadolescents and teenagers will be attracted to the resourceful Molly (Sampi), 14, who figures out how to navigate across 900 miles in the Australian Outback, often carrying her younger sister on her back, and survive while trying to allude the police. Based on fact and set in 1931, Molly, her cousin Gracie (Monaghan), and her eight-year-old sister Daisy (Sansbury) are forcibly taken from their family as part of the Australian government’s policy of permanently removing half-castes children–part Aborigine, part white–to be trained and educated for integration into white society. With only the shoes on their feet, the girls flee from the Dickensian Moore River Native Settlement pursued by a tracker. By following the Rabbit Proof Fence, the world’s longest unbroken barrier of its kind, through the desert, Molly hopes to be reunited with her mother. This exciting adventure film never condescends; the girls act their age. They can be temperamental, frightened, and vulnerable to the elements. Nor is the film preachy. The legal guardian of all Aboriginal people in Western Australia, AO Neville (Branagh) is portrayed as blatantly racist but sincere in his beliefs. He believed that the answer to the “coloured problem” was to breed out the Aborigine population. Director Noyce respects the intelligence of the audience to see the ridiculousness and tragedy of this policy, without resorting into making Neville, or other whites, a buffoon. If anything, this tact makes the film more powerful.

DVD Features: The half-hour documentary is a fascinating look on Noyce’s search for three Aboriginal children to carry his film. One would-be actress is replaced, while the lead (Sampi, an emerging method actress) buckles under the pressure. The commentary includes many interesting nuggets of information, including the middle-of-the-night phone call that led to the film.KT
August 10, 2003