Celia (1989)

Am I Missing Something?

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This strange little movie from the land Down Under is really two movies, one of which definitely works, but the other not so much. On one hand, it is a fairly realistic portrait of rural Australia in the 1950's that was dealing with both a plague of rabbits and of Communists. In retrospect, the wild rabbits had a far better chance of over-running conservative Australia than the commies, but the wars on both these "plagues" were somewhat similar in that, as well-intentioned as they may have been, a lot of innocents were caught in the crossfire. "Celia", the young heroine of this film, for instance, has recently lost her Communist grandmother and loses her only friends due to their parents ties to the Australian CP. The fateful blow,however, comes when she loses her beloved pet rabbit "Murgatroyd" to the authorities."Celia" is portrayed as having a rich fantasy life that leaves her disturbed and even dangerously disconnected from reality (not unlike the two young girls in the later Peter Jackson kiwi film "Heavenly Creatures"). However, the movie does not focus on this dark fantasy aspect nearly enough, and "Celia" is portrayed as a rather ordinary and, moreover, very sympathetic young girl, which makes the one scene of real-life violence that occurs (actually, it is left a little ambiguous) not very believable. It also doesn't help, as others have said, that in America they seized on the under-developed and unbelievable aspects by trying to market this as a horror movie. This is not quite as good as Peter Weir's famous Aussie film "Picnic at Hanging Rock", but like that movie it has been mis-categorized as a horror movie, and no doubt will disappoint fans of gory, visceral horror, while scaring away a lot of the foreign/art-film enthusiasts that might enjoy it. I actually like both horror and art films, but this is definitely mostly the latter. It would make a good double bill with "Picnic" or "Heavenly Creatures"--or, even better, the weird 1970's indie American film "The Orphan".It is definitely very well made and the acting is excellent, especially the young Rebecca Smart (child actors in Commonwealth always seem to be far, far better actors than the cloying, "adorable" moppets Hollywood always insists on casting in their saccharine kiddie crap). Check it out if you get a chance.

In summer, 2003, I took a class about Australian cinema. We watched films like "Walkabout", "Gallipoli" and "Rabbit-Proof Fence"; it might have thrown a wrench in the works had we watched "Celia". At the video/DVD store, I found it under the horror section, but it's only a horror flick in the loosest terms. The movie deals with a nine-year-old girl (Rebecca Smart) in 1950s Australia whose amorality and alienation from society drive her to complete madness; I think that that was the plot. Certainly it's ugly what Celia does, but seeing what the adults around her are like, I felt that I had no choice except to root for Celia.The historical context involves the Cold War and the government's efforts to stop the rabbit infestation. As people tell Celia not to fraternize with children of communists, she grows more and more disenchanted with the world around her - after all, friends are supposed to be friends no matter what the parents' political activity. But when a cop takes away her pet rabbit, she really gets nasty (it also shows that the rabbit-proof fence that lent its name to the 2002 movie clearly didn't work in holding back the leporid plague).So how to interpret this movie? It looks at face value like one of the many instances of a seemingly cute girl having a not so cute side (think "The Bad Seed"). One might say that the rabbits play a role similar to the ones in "Night of the Lepus" and "Donnie Darko", even though Celia's rabbit doesn't do anything. I guess that it's worth seeing, if only once.

It is with a heavy heart that I note Celia, possibly my favourite film, is now being marketed with a tacky subtitle. This film is comparable to Jane Campion's work and is anything but a straight horror film, with a subtle characterisation and a compassionate yet unsentimental picture of childhood not generally associated with that genre. The narrative viewpoint is well sustained, with the grownup world of barbecues, blacklists, and affairs observed from a child's angle. The horror in question is in Celia's imagination, which, like that of all children, plays out the stresses of her own family and her culture. Various plagues - literal and metaphoric - impinge on her world, from myxomatosis to communism. Fans of blood and gore will be disappointed. The film is an unhurried portrait of 50s Australia, the pressure to conform, childhood, death. Its climax is sharp and bloody but logical; as is the lightness of the ending. As a touchstone, think of the daughter in the Piano, with her outrageous storybook lies, her spontaneity, her hurt rebellion, and her ultimate childishness. Just don't think Carrie. This is gem of a film, and let's face it, Hollywood churns out a lot of disappointing ones. As soon as you see the opening titles with Rebecca Smart's expressive face glancing all around her, while the theme music plays, you'll realise you're in the hands of a very talented director.

Celia is a 9 year old girl with a lot of imagination. She lives with her family in South Australia in the fifties. She has a strong will, lots of charm and wit. Her family are communists, which makes them kind of outcasts in the society, and Celia has to fight mobbing schoolmates as well as discriminating teachers. She manages to do that very well. All this gives a rather frank and funny description of childhood problems, and Rebecca Smart plays her part extremely well. But Celia is not just a charming kid - when she hates, she really hates. And when she fantasizes about mysterious evil animals, she can't quite distinguish fantasy from reality. Which might seem rather normal, but Celia lives in a house, where a loaded gun is available... This movie is very entertaining, giving a varied picture of growing-up - and one can really feel the emotions and confusions, which is a part of being nine years old. At times the film becomes perhaps a bit too confusing - it can be quite difficult to follow the girls vivid imagination. But I'll guess, you have the same problem in the real world...