Somersault

So raw it’s practically fucking dripping down your face, this remarkable Australian feature is just simmering with angst, sexuality and melancholy. That’s all my boxes ticked. Already laden down with awards, Ms. Shortland’s boozy, fucked-up coming-of-age drama features cinema’s most compelling Little Lost Slapper since a young Sam Morton donned a fur-coat and no knickers for Under The Skin.
Heidi (the sublime Miss Cornish), is sixteen year-old white trash jail-bait with a dependence on the kindness of strangers. Endowed with a limited capacity for defining herself in relation to gentlemen in a way that doesn’t involve getting fucked in a caravan, our Mademoiselle B. makes a play for her mother’s boyfriend, gets caught and takes off.
With characteristic abandon, she arrives in the wintry ski resort of Lake Jindabyne, where she squirms her way into the life of a taciturn cattle rancher (Worthington) with intimacy issues.
This over-extended lost weekend makes for unimaginably poignant viewing, and though the grainy dream Badlands visuals are bewitching, the remarkably astute details prove even more seductive, with debut director Shortland finding real poetry in the pages of a girlish every-teen journal and a pair of red mittens.
Ultimately though, Somersault is about love – about needing love and looking for it in all the wrong places. As such, it’s absolutely mandatory viewing and a startling showcase for twenty-two year old Abbie Cornish. Her charismatic carnality leaps off the screen, sits on your lap and goes straight for your zipper, while her aching performance has prompted whispers about The New Nicole Kidman.
That’s hardly fair. At the same age, Ms Kidman’s career highlight was mucking around in BMX Bandits.

Running Time 106mins. Cert IFI Members. Out Now