LocusP

To be fair, I barely watch rom-coms, and after this, I'm unsure if I'll ever be convinced to watch another. I lasted halfway through in the hope it'd somehow get better, but every minute of that was awful.

I watched the movie because Nicole Kidman is in it. I enjoy her acting and she's been in some brilliant films.

I hate to say, she was terrible in this. She didn't inhabit her character at all. What it looked like was just a series of her striking poses and reading from a script. And her voice was weirdly shy and "little girlish" for a woman of her age who was meant to be a distinguished writer. She wasn't believable as either the girl's mother or as a woman falling for a man.

Zac Efron was ok, not great. The role he was given was pretty flat to start with. His strange looks didn't help. I thought he was meant to be the same age as Nicole's character - like, a film star in his late 40s who'd gotten too much plastic surgery. Then Nicole says he's "16 years younger". At which point, I have to go google Zac's actual age. So, okay, from what I read, he had an accident to his chin that caused issues. The lips and entire face are huge, but maybe he had to do this to even things out. Sadly, the look is bizarre.

The young woman who played Nicole's daughter (Zoey) was a delight to watch. She inhabited the role and gave it her all. Same for Kathy Bates.

Which brings us to the script. Did a group of people check it or read it? Didn't anyone figure that it was flat and didn't make sense? How does something like this manage to get made and with a cast of big name actors?

True, I'm not a rom-com viewer, but I've watched some in the past that were great. This was not, not for a minute of what I watched.

High Ground was absorbing viewing. The landscapes are beautifully shot and the story has an epic feel.

It's not exaggerating the brutality of 1920s/1930s Australia in any way, shape or form. In fact, it holds back from the worst of what actually happened. The story asked good questions. While 'revenge' can seem like the wrong path, what choice is there when the rule of the invaders is never going to acknowledge you? Who can you trust?

I read that the director said that the main thrust of the film was about a missed opportunity for white and First Nations people to find a way to live together.

But I can't accept this was an open possibility. It's well known that many of the English wanted First Nations people all wiped out. There is no negotiation with such people. No missed opportunity. There is only a fight to keep your culture alive.

The film had has the English saying that a country can't have "two people" (can't remember the exact quote). It sidestepped saying that some of the English viewed First Nations people as less than human and not "people".

Some other things also feel like a complete misstep. Like when Travis tells the boy (Gutjuk) you can see more & control things from the high ground. I mean to say, Gutjuk's people are shown surveying the land from much greater physical heights all through the film. And why did a white person get to name the main theme of the film?

I liked the inclusion of the "wild" First Nations woman, even though I'm unsure if, in real life, the men would have allowed a woman to travel with them or fight with them like she did.

I wasn't a fan of how the rest of the First Nations women were shown at the settlement. At first - young and beautiful and running about naked while being slaughtered. And then after that just as a clothed, older, sort of pathetic group in the distance, huddled together and doing/saying nothing. They weren't given a voice or anything to do. It was all just about the men.

I realise it was a "western-style" story, which is historically male-focused, but still, it felt it was missing that.

Overall, I recommend it.

We watch Australian dramas with the hope of supporting them. And I'm sure that the cast & crew of Exposure believe in this project.

But unfortunately, we found Exposure such a hard thing to sit through. We got three episodes in and had to call it quits. Almost nothing happens. And it's hard to care about anything that does happen.

We're given no reason to care or be interested in any of the characters. A young woman who sleeps with lots of men but also harbours resentment towards them should be a great place to mine material and really explore that - but what we see onscreen is just a series of dry, meandering scenes.

The camera lingers way too long on scenes of nothing. Like, just walking off a train and up a street takes forever. With "unearned" music accompanying the scene. The first conversation between the main character and her mother seems manufactured, to try to insert conflict that feels unearned.

The scene of the main character taking pictures she won a comp for is the only scene I could point to as having any impact. I felt like it should have been the first scene of the first episode of the entire series. And let everything feed off that. When she won the comp, she could have felt proud of herself, but then later hated herself for taking that picture. I wanted to see that kind of inner conflict, leading into hidden layers as the story unfolds. But I didn't get that.

There is nothing wrong with the acting of the characters - I just wish they had something to do. And I wish the story made us care. It wasn't the show for us - adults in their early 30s. Might resonate more with others.