My Brilliant Career

Sybylla lives on a farm in Australia. There is drought, no money and a crowded family. The girl wants to be a writer. She is sent to her wealthy grandmother, where she is to be finished and to find a good husband. Sybylla plays the piano, reads, and says whatever comes into her head. Harry Beecham courts her; he is handsome, rich and genuinely in love. If she marries she will have a comfortable life. She comes very close to saying yes, and then does her own arithmetic: can a woman marry and still write. Gillian Armstrong directs; it is her first feature. The film is adapted from the 1901 novel by Miles Franklin. Judy Davis plays Sybylla and Sam Neill plays Harry. It is an Australian production. With this film Armstrong became the first Australian woman to direct a feature in forty six years. Women held the key positions in the production; the producer Margaret Fink, the production designer Luciana Arrighi and the costume designer Anna Senior. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and received an Oscar nomination. Judy Davis and Sam Neill were unknown at the time and the film brought both forward. The matter it treats is choice; the film does not make marriage look bad, and that makes the choice harder. The narrative does not make Sybylla likeable; she is rude, proud and stubborn. The photography builds the Australian countryside of the late nineteenth century in detail. The ending gives no coming together. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow, the plot thin, and the period language heavy. Who it is for: viewers who like period drama and stories centred on women. Who it is not for: it is slow, distant, and the ending rueful.