The Fringe Dwellers

A film set on the edge of an Australian town. The Comeaway family live in a camp. Outside the town, in tin shacks. An Aboriginal family. Trilby does well at school. She is fifteen and does not want to stay there. Her sister Noonah is training to be a nurse. Their mother Mollie and father Joe are comfortable. They do not complain about living in the camp. Trilby insists. She wants a house. From there the film is a story of moving. The family takes a house in the town. Newly built, clean, with electricity. The first days go well. Then the problems start. The rent has to be paid. Joe does not work regularly. Relatives come. They stay and do not leave. The neighbours complain. The garden is not kept. The house overflows. What the narrative is interested in is not racism but expectation: its idea is that giving the family a house is not enough; they are asked to live another life at the same time and nobody asks what that means. Trilby's line is the hardest. She becomes pregnant. She does not want the child. The narrative does something there and gives no explanation. That scene is what it is most argued over. Noonah takes another road. Patient, hardworking, and she advances inside the system. The narrative sets the two sisters against each other and proves neither right. At the end the family goes back to the camp. The source is Nene Gare's novel. Most of the cast are Aboriginal actors, which was unusual for Australian cinema of the period. The film screened in the main competition at Cannes. Bruce Beresford had worked on other subjects before; this is among the last films he made in Australia. Kristina Nehm, Justine Saunders, Bob Maza and Ernie Dingo are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Australian cinema and social drama. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a clear outcome; the narrative proposes no solution for any side and its ending is openly bleak.