Elissa Down’s The Black Balloon, a semi-autobiographical piece that layers the experience of autism within a suburban family over a more traditional coming of age story, is officially the first Australian cinema success story of the new year. Recently awarded the Glass Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival’s Generation sidebar (essentially, films for a teenage market), Down’s film is also the first wide-release Australian narrative of 2008.

The Mollisons, a through-and-through Aussie family of mild, loving dysfunction have taken to a new lease of suburbia. Thomas Mollison (Rhys Wakefield) is doing the whole kid-in-a-new-town shtick, trying to fit in at school, playing for the attention of the prettiest girl in class, Jackie (Gemma Ward), when complications with his mother Maggie’s (Toni Collette) pregnancy force him into a more active caregiving role with his younger autistic brother Charlie (Luke Ford).Trying to negotiate adolescence under the shadow and responsibility of Charlie’s public behaviour, as he runs semi-naked around the neighbourhood, uses the toilets of random houses, rubs excrement onto his bedroom floor and chews tampons of said girl, Luke struggles to accept Charlie, lurching between love, understanding, embarrassment and teenage resentment.

Down’s film’s greatest strength is in its frank and unflinching observation of autism, in moments of abjectness and social confrontation, neatly underpinning and usurping the more expected cliches of its background boy meets girl story. The film feels like it crosses the line from a movie-lite or semi-tragic representation of autism, and into displaying it in a way which is awkward, uncompromised and unglamorised for the screen. The general public’s reaction to Charlie slides from mild discomfort to overt disdain to pronounced horror as he produces the kind of socially awkward moments usually reserved for American presidential speeches, and The Black Balloon’s writing and direction in this regard are generally successful in enabling the viewer to sympathise and understand the love, confusion, and frustration that encircles Charlie from his nearest and dearest.

Luke Ford (strangely enough, soon to be seen on screen as the second lead in the next Mummy movie) ingratiates himself into Charlie successfully (apparently it was a role developed with more than a slight touch of method acting via in-character stints at local shopping malls) admirably, giving a real sense of Charlie’s emotional range within the focus and constraints of his own attentions. But it is Gemma Ward as Jackie who, surprisingly, is the real acting life blood of this story. A former model, Ward is undeniably a screen presence, but is moreso charismatic, and negotiates a strong sense of girlish optimism and a more mannered kind of maturity to the proceedings in a similar way and function reminiscent of, say, Natalie Portman’s performance in Garden State. Similarly, Rhys Wakefield anchors his role admirably between the two.

But excepting the presence of an autistic child, the script here seems to be at pains to otherwise provide cliche upon cliche through its setup of its all too true blue Aussie family, from a battler mum (which Toni Collette does some admittedly impressive domestic scenery chewing with) to a battler Dad, to its broad stroke depictions of Australian culture (the Dad’s hung up on his old car, the surf life saving classes in which the school content is pretty much exclusively built around). The background to its central fraternal relationship, one of amiably chaotic family life, is at best familiar and at worst uninteresting.

And as a minor, slightly geeky, aside: there seems to possibly be some confusion in the scripting and the art department in regards to time setting with this one: weren’t Stack Hats/spokey-dokeys and Super Nintendos a good ten years apart or so?

The Black Balloon is ultimately a small story, one that runs the all too familiar gambit of coming of age, first love, growing into maturity and negotiating your own sense of youthful acceptance. But it describes those things in some unfamiliar territory through its frank and honest depiction of autism, and hence comes recommended.

Nb. Just out of pure compulsiveness, it should also be noted that, weirdly, this is the third film in the last few years which resolves its drama by having the main character(s) humiliate themselves onstage in a song and dance number, as a means of providing solidarity at the sake of public embarrassment. The other two are About a Boy and Little Miss Sunshine, and they all star Toni Collette, who watches said performance plaintively from the sidelines. What gives? If she wants to get typecast into the world’s most unlikely niche, she’s on her way!

Review by Al Cossar

Director: Elissa Down
Screenplay: Elissa Down and Jimmy ‘The Exploder’ Jack
Cast: Rhys Wakefield, Gemma Ward, Luke Ford, Erik Thomson, Toni Collette
Cinematography: Denson Baker
Running time: 97 minutes
Australian theatrical release: March 6, 2008

Watch The Black Balloon trailer: