Dead Letter Office is the kind of film you discover, late one night, on TV, and happily get drawn into it. Some other reviewer described it as warm and fuzzy. Come on! It's unique, it's temperate, not really warm, and so much concerned with loss and the need for compassion that fuzzy doesn't apply either.
The excellent Miranda Otto, best know internationally for Peter Jackson's LotR, plays Alice, a directionless twentysomething in Melbourne. She takes a job at the Dead Letter Office, hoping to use her new skills to track down her long lost father. The team is small, two women, three men, all rather distinct, maybe a bit lost themselves. Oh, and one homing pigeon. Alice slowly develops a rapport with an immigrant from Chile, Frank (George. DelHoyo), the department's boss. As her efforts to find her father loss their impetus her connection to Frank continues to grow, but are they simply too different, worlds apart, to really fall for each other?
A beautifully understated film of deep poignancy, and one that shows a different image of Australia from the clichés we all know. One of those small gems that one comes back to, from time to time, with undiminished satisfaction. As Hollywood wastes hundreds of millions of dollars per film, making worthless superhero codswallop that even the youngest generation is sick of, maybe the Yanks ought to study the smaller productions if only to rediscover everyday humanity, human stories, ones that invite understanding rather than fuelling righteous indignation and division?
Strongly recommended.
The excellent Miranda Otto, best know internationally for Peter Jackson's LotR, plays Alice, a directionless twentysomething in Melbourne. She takes a job at the Dead Letter Office, hoping to use her new skills to track down her long lost father. The team is small, two women, three men, all rather distinct, maybe a bit lost themselves. Oh, and one homing pigeon. Alice slowly develops a rapport with an immigrant from Chile, Frank (George. DelHoyo), the department's boss. As her efforts to find her father loss their impetus her connection to Frank continues to grow, but are they simply too different, worlds apart, to really fall for each other?
A beautifully understated film of deep poignancy, and one that shows a different image of Australia from the clichés we all know. One of those small gems that one comes back to, from time to time, with undiminished satisfaction. As Hollywood wastes hundreds of millions of dollars per film, making worthless superhero codswallop that even the youngest generation is sick of, maybe the Yanks ought to study the smaller productions if only to rediscover everyday humanity, human stories, ones that invite understanding rather than fuelling righteous indignation and division?
Strongly recommended.