Steve Skafte This film made me uneasy. It's so real, so true to life, so light and so heavy, understated and over the top. It captures all the wild uneasiness and expression and off-center humanity of childhood, and makes it breathless and fully alive. It takes you all over the place. There's so many things going on, so many events and strange sights and sounds. The kids are swept along through some kind of strange journey, a backward and breathless running through life. This is not a horror film, or even a fantasy. It is a straightforward drama, that not only captures real life but delves deep into the sort of confused reality of imagination that children so often confuse with everything else.This film made me uncomfortable. At times, it's alive and pure and safe and quiet. At other times, it's brash and explosive and emotionally uneasy. In the end, it's dark and deeply disturbed. You don't see it coming, but in a way, the ending colors everything that's come before. It's the believability that makes it so strange, so hard.Rebecca Smart plays Celia. She shows a range of character that totally beyond expectation. She's confident, scared, awake, aware, confused. It takes a lot of time to understand all the complexities at work in her. Celia makes no sense, or maybe all too much. In the end, she becomes a more complete person. One who will live with things most of us could hardly even imagine.Geoffrey Simpson's cinematography is totally realist. There's no strange photography, no experimentation. It's filmed like a regular story, without exaggeration. And it's all the better for it. This film's writer/director Ann Turner (who's done little else of note), creates a strange and powerful story with her understanding of character. She pushes through all of her strangest, most uneasy ideas without ever making you feel like you're not seeing real lives. Chris Neal creates some strongly effective music. It is at once timeless and perfectly fitting. It sounds little like any movie music I'd previously heard, but quite exactly fitting to the images. Otherworldly without feeling out of place."Celia" is not an average film. It sees and expresses things in a way utterly like any other in the history of film. It has no peers in this sense, and that alone makes it one of the most powerful cinematic experiences I've ever had. But the nature in how it grafts darkness to light, fear to joy, is disconcerting. If you still remember childhood, you can find yourself in the scenes of "Celia". This is not sensationalism. This is one little girl's precarious existence.

frida-3 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.

DomiMMHS As far as I can see, "Celia" is a complex movie about childhood that lacks something. It fails to make the viewer understand the way the heroine feels and thinks. The heroine is Celia, a young girl who grows up in Australia in the 1950s.I must mention that I was way disappointed by the contents of the movie. If only because the plot summaries I read about it in diverse magazines turned out pretty wrong. They were like: "9-year-old Celia has no playmates except for her rabbit. When a policeman takes away the rabbit from her, she vows revenge." Alright, but that's not the gist of it. Celia is not an isolated or lonely little girl, first of all, she's rather horrifyingly lively. She does have playmates, three neighbour kids whose parents are communists. Celia actually spends more time with these kids and with their mother than she does with her own parents. Moreover, many scenes deal only with these children's play. Most of the time they play in some desert landscape, which seems kind of grotesque, where there is caves and rocks and sand - but hardly any people or animals. Grotesque - that's what the movie appears to be like. We have these two parties of kids: The children of the communists and the "communist haters" and they fight a rather serious battle. And we have that crazy idea of the government that rabbits were pests. I don't object to "grotesque" stories, but a certain deal of irony is required to make them enjoyable - this movie lacks irony.Still we get a good impression of how complex the worlds children make up of their fantasy really are. We also learn how adults don't have any idea about the thoughts children have, about the crazy wars they deliver, about the friendship or the hate they feel. As this movie is seen through the eyes of a child, of course the adult's "play", i.e. the hate towards communists, is not dealt with very openly.That wouldn't matter, if we were really offered the opportunity to identify with the child. But here the movie lacks care and empathy, we don't get close enough to little Celia - played by Rebecca Smart. This young actress doesn't do a bad job, that's for sure, but she isn't outstanding either. She's working about on the same level as the whole movie is.I'll vote "6" for "slightly above mediocre", v e r y slightly, honestly.

jpjensen 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...