SnoopyStyle Lena is blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Most see her as white at first glance. She has an Aboriginal mother and an Irish father. When her mother gets her brother arrested, she decides to leave. She fails to get back on the bus at a stop. She starts walking and is joined by Vaughn. He escaped from low security prison work detail to go home to see his sick mother. The two struggle over views as they sometimes hitch rides.There is a quiet sincerity personified by Lena. It is slow at times with its quietness. However, there is also a magnetism about the two leads. The young actors possess a dignity and power within them. It's an intriguing theatrical debut for filmmaker Ivan Sen.

jay-sears Why all the great reviews baffles me. The acting is awful but i agree the story line is OK.This film would have so much more justice if the actors had shown more emotion and non robotic movements. It was like watching slow robots. The story line is reasonable and would have worked better if there was more action in the film - i'm not saying fights but more emphasis to have some exciting scenes in the middle. The film drags on a bit so expect a slow, slow, slow movie. The scenery is great but that does not put you off from wondering how any of these actors got a job. If only the acting was great I would love this film but it is terrible. If anyone has watched good actors they would realise that they were terrible, non emotional robots. Another promising OZ film, another flop in acting! Don't waste your time cringing on the acting by watching this movie. Watch something else instead.Worst acting i have ever seen.

jazzpiano- Firstly, I am shocked at all the positive reviews for this film. On a superficial level it is a fine film; technically very strong and well-paced. However, the film is full of so much contradictory stereotyping and half-baked social commentary that it falls flat on its face. The acting is also terribly wooden, and I doubt I can find the kindness within myself to call it 'understated'. The music comes in when any small drama occurs, and the audience is pushed to care for two characters who really never become likable because they are played by two blank-faced actors.I am particularly intrigued as to why an Aboriginal director would want to perpetuate the stereotype of his people - Drugs? Guns? Tattoos? Domestic abuse? Teenage pregnancy? Drinking? EVEN an eyepatch? Aren't you going a bit far? And every time director Sen tries to de-construct or analyse this stereotype he ends up reverting back to it (one specific example is when Vaughn spits in the cop's face). The stereotyping of white police is especially brutal - there is not one decent cop around according to this film. In fact, white people in general are not too favourably looked upon. The only nice white person in this film is an old man who gives our two heroes a lift, and possibly the conveniently named "Sean", which gives the Irish-wannabe Lena a little pang.The other white characters try to kidnap Lena or treat Aborigines disrespectfully.The camera-work is often too obvious. A hand-held camera arrives to shake things up whenever an upset occurs. A fight, the threat of violence, sickness - the hand-held camera is there to tell us, "Wow, isn't the situation getting intense!", but after spending so much time establishing a static mood through gratuitous landscape and time-lapse shots of clouds, the hand-held is an obvious symbolic device and director would've done better keeping his style consistent. The use of tracking shots was often very disrupting to the flow of the film as well, except in the last sequence where it is quite effective.But unfortunately by that stage, I couldn't care less what happened to the characters, as they stared blankly at each other 'til the end.The one thing to admire about this film, however, are the good intentions behind it. This movie failed on an emotional engagement level, but for the sheer effort involved in its making, and its technical triumphs, it gets 5/10, which I think is fair.

oddur_thomas Ivan Sen was a guest of the Dendy art-house cinema group at the advance screening I attended. He spoke about the script writing process, casting and funding hurdles at length.The previous 6 years of Ivan's career have been devoted to producing short films; all of which have thematically built towards the story in 'Beneath Clouds'.Taking its title from the Pearl Jam song 'Black', the film shows two young people (Lena and Vaughn) who escape from restrictive situations to rendevous with a remote parent in a search for love and validation ... only it is not clear if that love will be returned.Sen wrote the script from his own experiences growing up in Alice Springs with an Aboriginal mother and an absent European father (like Lena) and his full-blooded cousins constantly in and out of juvenile courts and detention centres (like Vaughn and Lena's brother). He said that at first writing a feature-length script was difficult given his past film efforts ran to a maximum of 30 minutes. However, the interim draft boasted 140 pages. During and between script-writing he listened to lots of music (not only Pearl Jam!) and wrote some musical phrases and themes that become the film sound-track in the hands of Alistair Spence. The final script was 90 pages, and, by neat coincidence, the running time of the film is exactly 90 minutes!Vaughn was cast by approaching a young man on the streets of Moree. Damian Pitt was initially incredulous at being asked to play a lead role in a feature film, but was quick to come around. The approach of casting Lena, explained Sen, was more conventional. Although he tried to recruit a female lead in the same way as Damian was found, the process of driving by, pulling up slowly, rolling down the window and asking 'do you want to be in a movie?' was fraught with too many sleazy connotations to be taken seriously by the young women he approached! Through a friend, Sen viewed an audition tape featuring Danielle Hall, and though initially ambivalent, the director was awestruck after meeting her in her hometown of Wee Waa and immediately sensed her ability to identify with the character and project the lines of the script as if they were her own. Obviously, judges at the Berlin festival were equally moved. The remainder of the cast were largely amateur, recruited around Moree.Funding for the film was conditional on it being a feature, to enable it to travel the worldwide festival circuit as a stand-alone picture. Chief funding bodies were the NSW Film Commission and the Pacific Film & TV Commission - the former association ensured all location filming was in NSW. Roads and scenery around Moree, Gunnedah, Blacktown and Sydney show a great dynamic range of terrain and geography. From the time of the green-light of funding to shooting took only 4 months; the shoot went for 6 weeks; and post-production/editing took 6 months; all at a cost of 2-and-a-half million Australian dollars (roughly one-and-a-quarter mill. US dollars). Not cheap by Oz standards but not expensive either in an international sense.My impression of the film is of a modern classic, up there with Gallipolli, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. It was well-deserving of the attention of the Berlin jury, and Ivan the auteur and musician has a great future ahead of him. His next project will be a black comedy set in Mexico about people who visit a small town hoping to be abducted by aliens.Mr Sen, best of luck, and please don't get all indulgent like Russell Crowe or Billy Bob Thornton by fronting a lame rock band! Keep it real.