Review of Ladies in Black

It's hard to convey how inconsequential this film is. I tried describing it to a friend and she said it sounded like a dessert, sweet and enjoyable but not very nutritious. But if it were a dessert it would be Angel Delight, an artificial concoction having the form of a dessert but not really all that enjoyable. It's set in Sydney in the late 1950s, and it's striking how well the film-makers have managed to reconstruct it, down to the shots of the harbour without the Opera House, and with the trams still running in the city.

It centres on two women, and a young girl working as a temp, in a big department store, who all have their issues and problems - the girl wants to go to university (she's very clever) but her dad doesn't believe girls should, one of the women has a shy and useless-in-bed husband, and so on. But none of this amounts to any dramatic tension; as soon as an issue is introduced it is resolved or dissolved. Oddly, there's a strong migration theme - some of the main characters are European refugees...but again this is all sweetness and light, with nothing really approaching an issue; the refugees eat unfamiliar food, but the native-born Ozzies try it and like it, and that's it.

I can't imagine why Bruce Beresford wanted to direct this, or even why it was made.

Watched on Amazon Prime via Chromecast.