Adolescence includes aches (loneliness, alienation from adults, sexual longing) and joys (first love, treasured friendship and music). Few films have portrayed both classes of teenage experience as warmly and intelligently as the 1991’s Flirting.
Due to an execrable U.S. advertising campaign, which misrepresented the film as a sniggering teen sex comedy from “those crazy blokes down under” (I cannot bring myself to post the trailer) this Australian gem barely opened in the U.S. and when it did mostly the wrong people saw it. But a precious handful of people outside of Oz have found this excellent film and continue quite properly to point others to it. Having been so blessed by a friend some years ago, I wish to pay it forward here with the strongest possible recommendation that you give this excellent movie a look.
Writer-Director John Duigan sets his story in two boarding schools that stare at each other (like their residents) across a lovely lake. In the boys’ school, anxious, stammering Danny Embling (sweetly played by Noah Taylor) is being ground down by sadistic masters and bullying classmates. Meanwhile, a student from Uganda, Thandiwe Adjewa (the luminous star-to-be Thandie Newton), is getting a cold welcome at the girls’ school. Yet as is so often the case, the underdogs attract a stout friend or two, and are also drawn irresistibly to each other. Taylor and Newton have great chemistry on screen, and you will be rooting for their budding romance from the very first.
The other central character is the alpha girl of Thandiwe’s school, played to perfection by a pre-fame Nicole Kidman. Initially imperious and frosty, she eventually reveals more accessible layers beneath, particularly in the superb scene after she catches Thandiwe sneaking back into the school after a rendezvous with Danny.
Many of the plot elements and themes here are familiar (Rebel Without a Cause is one a zillion films to tread similar ground). But it wasn’t fresh plots that made Shakespeare the Immortal Bard, it was what he did with them. With its wisdom, sensitivity and wit, Flirting turns the usual coming-of-age story into an fresh and inspiring experience that is not to be missed.
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