It is films such as this that are often our most valuable treasures in a such a relentless world.įor all its soothing qualities and faultlessly sustained ideology, My Brilliant Career is not a perfect film. Having had rather a trying couple of months, I had an almost instantaneous hankering to return to the gorgeous scenery and laid-back pace of this most gently entertaining of films and it afforded me some much needed respite. But it wasn’t just the removal of that nagging doubt that brought me back to the film so quickly. Returning to the film a second time, I was able to enjoy it even more with the assurance that it was indeed that film I hoped it would be. Without dropping any spoilers, I was delighted with the direction the plot ultimately took, forsaking so many clichés that it cleverly planted the seeds for and then neglected to water. After years of feeling let down by the direction taken by plots in costume dramas I was slightly on edge that the film might blow the impeccable study of female independence it had built up throughout its early scenes. With its sumptuous recreation of 19th century Australia, all glorious blue skies and lush vegetation, I took an instant liking to My Brilliant Career and its headstrong heroine Sybylla, played to perfection by Davis.

The result is an unforced, intelligent film which effortlessly avoids the traps of confusing feminism with desexualisation or suggesting that romance with a male suitor must always be an undermining force. While the period drama is a rich source of leading roles for women, few are as unfalteringly progressive as My Brilliant Career, a film adapted from a work by female novelist Miles Franklin, by a female producer and director, Margaret Fink and Gillian Armstrong, which in turn made an instant star of its female lead, Judy Davis. One of the landmark films of the Australian New Wave was Gillian Armstrong’s striking feminist period drama My Brilliant Career, a beautifully shot adaptation of the 1901 novel of the same name. The Australian New Wave, an era during the 70s and 80s in which Australian cinema grew significantly in worldwide popularity, is far less talked about nowadays than the French New Wave or the New German Cinema but it nonetheless produced many excellent films, from low-key hits like Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock to blockbuster successes like the Mad Max films and Crocodile Dundee. Starring: Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Wendy Hughes

My brilliant career book review