Most people I know (and read) seem to spend more time moaning about Australian cinema than actually watching it. Currently on our screens is Cactus, an accessible and entertaining road movie by first time writer-director (but veteran camera op) Jasmine Yuen-Carrucan. Blink and you’ll miss Cactus’s theatrical run, but keep your eyes open and you may just catch a glimpse of something moving on the horizon: the hazy, undulating outline of an oasis in an otherwise barren desert.

Is it a mirage or is the Australian cinema landscape more diverse than we give it credit for? There are many criteria one can use to judge the success of a film - critical response, international recognition, box-office, representation, formal innovation, etc - and very few films score across the board. With a home-grown title, it seems that cultural commentators (in this day and age, that’s all of us, folks) focus on the one criteria which isn’t fully met. And it’s never the same one.

Are our films too commercial or not commercial enough? Are they too Australian to sell overseas or too similar to global products to stick out? Are they too quirky or too bland? Too esoteric or too pedestrian?

Cactus, though it won’t stay around long enough to make an impact, is possibly the best thing to happen to Australian cinema in a couple of years. Not because it’s a masterpiece, far from it, but because it sets out to do something and does it well, refusing to pander to the lowest common denominator while fully engaging with the language and codes of accessible genre cinema. It’s distinctly Australian but refuses self-parody. It’s a genre film but it aims to appropriate rather than replicate. It’s worth our while but it ain’t worthy.

Describing the plot of this film is pointless, suffice to know it follows two men heading west on deserted outback roads. The driver is the kidnapper, his passenger is the parcel he must deliver. The reasons are irrelevant - it’s about money, it’s about dignity, it’s about power. As with most good road movies, the journey is much more interesting than the destination.

The film bypasses establishing shots and character intros, locking the viewer into its tense grip from the first scene. Harnessing the possibilities of framing with the utmost precision, the director unpacks the story in long, gorgeously photographed sequences.

The banter and power plays between Eli and John - on screen for most of the film’s duration - is expertly written and brought to life thanks to pitch-perfect performances from David Lyons and Travis McMahon. The tight, laconic script reveals little, giving the story room to blossom in the minimalist environment of the Australian badlands.

Cactus (as its phallic title perhaps implies) is first and foremost about masculinity, about the roles available to (white) Australian (straight) men and how well they cope with them.

Eli and John are two halves of the same young bloke, cocky but able to be sensitive, ambitious but limited by ability, men of action emasculated by their environment, whether it’s the dog-eat-dog world of the city or the harsh brutality of the outback. A third character - the older, self-confident country cop played to perfection by Bryan Brown - offers a reference: the archetype of unadulterated masculinity against which a new generation must constantly measure itself.

Behind the well-worn images of the road-bound thriller, such as the Vanishing Point-like car fetishism, there exists in Cactus a subtle study of virility not usually prevalent in genre cinema. While sex is totally absent from the film, male bodies are filmed with quasi-erotic intensity, in various stages of undress, under physical duress and prey to many forms of bondage.

Cactus is elegant, restrained and coherent. It’s a welcome addition to our national cinema, a solid, personal and accomplished film which adds to the diversity of a cinema much more vibrant than is too widely believed.

Review by Matt Ravier

Director: Jasmine Yuen Carrucon
Screenplay: Jasmine Yuen Carrucon
Cast: Travis McMahon, David Lyons, Bryan Brown, Shane Jacobson, Daniel Krige, Celia Ireland, Zoe Tuckwell-Smith, Steve Rodgers
Australian theatrical release: May 1, 2008

Watch the Cactus trailer: