Australia | 2009
113 minutes
Director: Ana Kokkinos
Screenplay: Andrew Bovell, Melissa Reeves, Patricia Cornelius, Christos Tsiolkas.
Based on their play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class co-written with Irine Vela
Producer: Al Clark
Photography: Geoff Burton
Editor: Jill Bilcock
Production designer: Simon McCutcheon
Costume designer: Louise McCarthy
Music: Cezary Skubiszewski
With: Frances O’Connor, Miranda Otto, Deborra-Lee Furness, Victoria Haralabidou, Monica Maughan, Wayne Blair, William McInnes, Sophie Lowe
Festivals: Melbourne, Brisbane, Toronto, San Sebastián, London 2009
Censors rating tbc
Heartfelt and bracingly realistic in honouring the actual dramas that beset fractured contemporary families, Blessed interweaves four vivid stories of alienated teens and their preoccupied mothers. Adapting a stage piece created by four writers, Ana Kokkinos (Head On) carries off a dangerously simple formal device: in the first half of the film she shows events from the point of view of the kids. In the second half we see what the mothers see. Kokkinos’s imaginative identification with the denizens of the scruffy outer suburbs is as thorough as her ability to empathise either side of the generation gap. A fantastic cast blends young newcomers with some of Australia’s best known. This, like Samson & Delilah, by which it had the bad luck to be overshadowed, is social realism at its most visceral and clarifying.
“Deeply impressive… A film truly reflective of contemporary Australian life, Blessed is one to see.” — Jo Chichester, Vogue
