This is the story of teenage girl Steph, who is brought up by her fiery aunt Jude after her pregnant mother Jass and Vietnamese father are killed in a car crash. The arrival of her late mother's diary reveals the colorful, sexy secrets of Jude and the foreman Alan that allow Steph to reinvent her vision of the world.
Acting
Hugo Weaving's quietly menacing foreman—unsettling without overt villainy.
Cinematography
Golden-hour orchards masking rot, gorgeous and oppressive.
Writing
Diary-as-device structure that actually earns its reveals.
Director
Craig Monahan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Emma Lung was 20 playing 17, but the age gap with Weaving (then 45) was deliberately unaddressed in marketing to avoid spoiling the dynamic's unease.
Part of a wave of mid-2000s Australian films exploring rural masculinity's decay; Monahan previously directed The Interview (1998), another interrogation of unreliable narrators.
AU
US
