A debut film from an AFTRS student. A typical, empty, superficial piece of work that displays no effort at trying to get inside the minds of these characters, indeed, it rather pretends to know and is so convinced that these are 'good blokes and Sheila's' it doesn't even bother to try any harder. The story lumbered from point to point with holes in between the size of the Hawkesbury River, and the acting does no more than try and cover over these. In the end, none of it comes together in any sensible way, and there is no attempt to show what the hell this whole mess of a film is about anyway. Is it about oyster farming, or is it about life of a Sydney sider living in the country?Or is it neither? A confusion. (Spoiler) It ends with the main male and female characters in a bath together, having somehow successfully fallen in love, with no attempt on the part of the filmmaker to convincingly portray the two falling in love. It's almost as if we are expected to believe this relationship based on the mythology or formula seen in other films, a concession that this is poorly written but telling us at the same time we should go along with it for the sake of pleasing the ego of some filmmaker far far away with nothing to say and all the power to say nothing. Another film from our abysmal industry, and why? Just ask where the filmmakers learned their craft.
Review of Oyster Farmer
