Walking on Water (2002)
***/****
starring Vince Colosimo, Maria Theodorakis, Judi Farr, Nicholas Bishop
screenplay by Roger Monk
directed by Tony Ayres
by Bill Chambers Last year’s admirable ode to grief Moonlight Mile was given an injection of freshness by the cruelly luminous Ellen Pompeo, but in the end, the chaos the film depicted seemed too straightforwardly resolved. Australia’s Walking on Water, which likewise explores the aftermath of an untimely death (thus finding itself plum in a new niche market with Moonlight Mile and the cable phenom “Six Feet Under”), isn’t as entertaining as Moonlight Mile, but nobody in it can say one thing that will fix everything, and, boy, is it well observed. The picture is little more than–yet sufficiently–a medley of grief gestures (as screenwriter Roger Monk has remarked, “No two people react [to the death of a loved one] in the same way”): some joshing (praying for reincarnation to spare the departed from coming back as a “poof”), others piercing (kicking a mourner out of the wake for crying too loud), all coalescing into a gripping and mildly devastating viewing experience.