Summer Coda
Cinema Nova, 22/11/2010
Status: Behind by 9 and a half films
About the nicest thing I can say about this film is that the orange trees look really good. Other than that, I rather found Summer Coda to be overlong and undercooked.
Heidi (RACHEL TAYLOR, Transformers) has been in Nevada since her parents separated when she was little, but now she’s coming home to Mildura for her father’s funeral. She hitchhikes (for some bizarre reason) and is picked up by Michael (ALEX DIMITRIADES, Head On, The Heartbreak Kid) a Milduran orange farmer. They embark on a slow boiling, grief-fueled and entirely unconvincing relationship.
The script is slight (and at times wildly misjudged), so the film relies on the actors. This is perhaps too much too ask as there is little spark between the two would-be romancers, and the goldmine that should have been the troop of itinerant fruit pickers do little but up the ‘larrakin’ quotient.
Slow I don’t mind, but pointless is another story.
