Till Human Voices Wake Us
Young adolescent Sam Franks (Lindley Joyner) spends his summers away from school with his physician father (Peter Curtin), whose schedule barely allows for quality father-son time. Therefore, Sam idles away most of his time with neighbor Maurie Lewis (Frank Gallacher) and Maurie's handicapped daughter Silvy (Brooke Harman), who also happens to be Sam's best friend. One night following a dance, Sam and Silvy kiss for the first time, and go down to the nearby river. As the two are lazily floating in the river and watching the night sky, Silvy disappears underwater and her body is never found. Several years afterwards, an adult Sam (Guy Pearce) -- who has gone on to become a psychiatry instructor -- journeys back to the same town for the funeral of his recently deceased father. While en route, Sam encounters Ruby (Helena Bonham Carter), a mysterious young woman he is forced to rescue from the same river that Silvy had disappeared in. After bringing Ruby to his father's house to calm her down after the incident, Sam begins to feel a strangely familiar comfortableness with her and the two begin to visit all of Sam's and Silvy's old stomping grounds. more..
Director: Michael Petroni
Starring: Guy Pearce, Helena Bonham Carter, Frank Gallacher, Lindley Joyner, Brooke Harman
Like the best of poems, it doesn't lend itself to easy understanding. But, like the best of poems, it's extremely provocative, to both imagination and intellect.
Stays emotionally mired because of a static screenplay that fails to express its issues dramatically.
Despite being well acted and sweetly moving when it strips down to the tender poem at its heart, Till Human Voices Wake Us spends too much time playing to an otherworldly suspense that simply isn't there.
Petroni takes the poem at face value, turning diaphanous literary imagery opaque and literal.
So busy building its symbolic frame that it forgets to develop its characters, or even to make them likable.
Best Screenplay - Original
Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards (2002)
Golden Trailer Awards (2003)
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