A rebellious youngster has difficulty adjusting to her new life at a strict Victorian boarding school.
Oscar-nominated director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Tender Mercies) crafts a tender coming-of-age tale that introduces one of Australian literature’s most beloved characters to the screen, Laura Tweedle Rambotham (Susannah Fowle).
Rightly regarded as one of the finest films ever made about Australian adolescents, the director Bruce Beresford’s 1978 drama The Getting of Wisdom exists in a space unaffected by time. It’s hard to imagine the film’s themes – from puberty-related growing pains to repressive institutions and comparisons between small-town and big-city life – ever going out of fashion. And the story is so well told, with such attention to detail and an implicit understanding of the rhythms required for interesting drama, it has aged not a jot over three and a half decades. – The Guardian
Starring Julia Blake, Dorothy Bradley, Kay Eklund, Max Fairchild, Jan Friedl, Diana Greentree, Maggie Kirkpatrick, Monica Maughan, Candy Raymond, Terence Donovan, Kerry Armstrong.
Not rated.