This debut feature from director Fred Schepisi drew on his own upbringing for this moving, unblinking but ultimately beautiful study of how the shackles of religious dogma and rites affect the burgeoning manliness of teenage boys at a Victoria-based seminary in the Australian autumn of 1953. The transition from childhood to adolescene is captured with subtlety and skill. A unique facet of this film is how the players combine Catholic guilt with natural Australian boisterousness. One remembers with some affection the tender relationship between the central character, a 13-year-old boy (Simon Burke) and the equally pubescent girl he encounters at a nearby lodge; and the night on the town in which two of the brothers (the elder of whom is superbly played by Nick Tate) carouse and encounter the temptations of the local flesh. The film could have done with more of such moments, but its best sequences are very good indeed.


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