Review:

Film "Walking On Water"

By John Frame (17th July, 2002) (Rating 8 out of 10)

Walking On Water (2002) www.walkingonwater.net.au   

(premieres 20th July 2002, at the 11th Brisbane International Film Festival

Director: Tony Ayres

Writer: Roger Monk.

Actors: Vince Colosimo - Charlie; Maria Theodorakis - Anna; Judi Farr - Margaret

Walking On Water is about the way people deal with grief. It’s also about death with dignity, in that attempting to provide just that for a friend is what causes most grief for the main characters.

When Gavin has lived as long as he can in relative dignity with HIV/AIDS, his live-in friends call for his family to come from rural South Australia to be at his bedside in Sydney. A traumatic, rather than peaceful death adds to the stress of the surviving friends and family as they try to restart their lives after 18 months of increasingly intense pressure.

Charles and Anna are both long time friends and housemates of Gavin. Charles has been working as full-time carer and Anna was also Gavin’s business partner – so their lives have been closely entwined.

Charles is struggling to maintain his sense of purpose and his relationship with boyfriend Frank, while Anna takes full advantage of an opportunity to feel wanted.

Australian acting legend Judi Farr is rock solid and very impressive as the loving mum who had lost her son to far off Sydney many years earlier. “Fucking Sydney!” Margaret mutters at the city itself, as well as its traffic. She has as much need to grieve as the others, but lacks any peer support and is being deliberately distanced from contributing to the mourning process by Anna.

It’s an intense and beautiful film with a superb soundtrack and real life characters. There is ample dark humour to add relief and overall it is definitely more food for thought than depressing, as we follow each survivor's search for resolution.

We all have to learn to deal with grief. Hopefully, though, we can take up the offer made at the start of the film: “Does anyone need counseling?”