41. Looking For Grace, directed by
Sue Brooks

What’s Yours Is Mine, Sweetheart

By Rose Marel

Let’s start at the very beginning – a very good place to start. Or actually, let’s not. Let’s not even start at the end. The middle? Nah. Let’s start around the quarter mark, then speed forward, glossing right through until just beyond the three quarters. A film that, on the surface, centres around “looking for Grace” almost begins with our finding her. It thus follows that if Grace is located within the first thirty minutes, then this is a film more concerned with the “why“ and “how” than the “what”. Brooks quickly underlines that the end result is of lesser importance. That maybe, the event of Grace’s disappearance and her subsequent discovery are merely the catalysts for much more. It’s the pieces leading up to, and following, this dramatic act that should be the focus of our concentration.

Highly innovative in terms of structure, Looking For Grace constantly breaks chronology, jumping backwards and forwards to unearth a gradual accumulation of details. By shifting focalisation – from Grace to each parent, to characters of seemingly lesser connection – the whole story builds, as secrets rear their ratty heads, and momentary images gain later significance. It’s a clever technique and, while it’s been explored by others before, definitely not in this same way.

The first account is from Grace’s (Odessa Young) perspective, told like a flashcard overview. We’re given the bare scenario as the sequences gradually accelerate, the dialogue wanes, and the scenes reduce into images. Travelling by coach across the sweeping Australian nothingness, Grace and her friend appear to be on their way to a music festival. A young male soon attracts Grace’s attention, and from there things start to slide downhill. We soon realise that the young lady ran away from home, armed with her parent’s money. When her parents finally drive past her, as she aimlessly wonders through the outback, she begins running. Away from the car, away from the road, further out into the barren, arid wilderness. There’s nothing, and no one. This image of her – running pointlessly into the dessert with the irrational desire to escape – is a startling one, brimming with desperation.

Following this is Bruce’s story – a quick couple of moments that feel random, but explicitly hint at interconnectedness. From there, the film swaps between Tom (Terry Morris), an elderly ‘detective’ figure, and Grace’s parents Denise (Radha Mitchell) and Dan (Richard Roxburgh), from their separate vantage points. Every swap is juxtaposed to reveal more, and every revisiting of character further deepens the plot. Brooks tantalizes us, feeding only morsels of information before backtracking again, returning to certain moments where, this time, they’re examined in more detail and with greater context. Only in Denise’s first entry does the story begin to form. Like a puzzle, pieces drop into place, and from our birds eye view, we slowly see the full picture. Or… so we think.

Setting up an ultra Australian atmosphere, Brooks establishes a family based in suburbia. At once comfortable and stifling, their big house is a sterile one, impersonally decorated with professional family portraits. The typically Australian tone is helped in part by strong accents and colloquialisms, merged with aerial shots of the outback. But really, the sense of middle class living is universal, and mundane details of everyday life are firmly embedded in the story. It’s hugely comedic, but mainly in its banal truth, with sequences of extended triviality like Denise quibbling with the sofa cleaners over additional service fees, or Tom assessing the quality of his ‘tooth whitening’ toothpaste. Everything feels fresh and alive in its picayune observations of daily existence.

But all this staleness adds validation to Grace’s rebellion. Her parents have grown accustomed to a passionless life governed by the vacuousness of common-day routine, in a subconscious bid to fill the widening gap of intimacy between them. Her family unit is composed of distance masked by domestic bore, of parents absorbed by an image of normality, and it’s only once Grace disappears that their stale reality is somewhat disrupted. Grace may be the one who runs away, but they’ve all escaped from each other, having drifted apart without recognising why. Once on the road as they search for their daughter, confined by space, and faced only with each other and time, questions that were silent become aired. Is it easier to communicate while driving? Speaking without eye-contact, and throwing words out in a way that feels almost anonymous?

Due to the segmented style, Looking For Grace relies on a strong ensemble and, oh, does it deliver. Brooks extracts detailed performances from every cast member, including the more minor ones. All the actors are fabulous, full of individual quirks, which plays into the film’s humour, while uniquely outlining each character. Richard Roxburgh plays an insipid fart of a man, weak and as tightly reigned in as his wife, the equally incredible Mitchell. Both have fully fleshed-out performances, with Roxburgh’s staccato and aggressively dynamic speech patterns echoing his finicky personality, and Mitchell’s constant upward inflections highlighting her defensive superiority.

Odessa Young, too, is magnificent. Vulnerable, fierce, and full of angst – she’s a web of contradictions with an on-screen presence that is so completely alive. She’s thoughtful and unrehearsed in her performance, making her completely riveting to watch. Also, the resemblance between Young and Mitchell is quite notable, particularly towards the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, more so the second time. When I first watched it, I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending, and the final sucker-punch, but now I think there’s a sense to it. Brooks speaks of the randomness of life, the small details, the inter-relation between all things, and how chaos gets thrown in with it. Yes, Grace the person is recovered. But that’s not the end. Only after a final event shakes our characters and lifts them out from themselves can the second search begin: for another grace – that intangible virtue that remains floating just out of their reach. And that journey is one that will continue for those characters as their life unfolds beyond the film’s conclusion.