# Well, The (1997)

### reviewed by
JONATHAN RICHARDS

    BLUE MOVIE

    THE WELL

    Directed by Samantha Lang

Screenplay by Laura Jones, from the novel by Elizabeth Jolley

    With Pamela Rabe, Miranda Otto

    Plan B     NR    98 min

Samantha Lang's debut feature, an exercise in character and creepiness steeped in a deep azure as if the print had been thrown in the wash with the colored clothes, is a test of patience. That patience is ultimately rewarded, but it requires slogging through an awfully slow set-up. Even in the payoff things never get too lively, but they do get intense.

Lang begins in media res with the pivotal scene of the movie: two women, one dour and spinsterly and the other young and giddy, leave a late-night dance at a remote bar in the Australian outback. The young one drives, recklessly, and kills a stranger on a lonely road. Hester dumps the body down a dry well on her property.

We now go back to discover how we got here. Katharine (Miranda Otto), a recent reform school graduate, arrives as a sort of housekeeper at the farm where Hester (Pamela Rabe) lives with her old and dotty father. The father soon dies, and Hester promptly sells the homestead and moves with Katharine into a smaller place. They stow the cash a couple of cookie tins on top of a dresser, and begin to fantasize about a trip they'll take to Europe and New York.

Rabe plays Hester with the restraint and permanence of a part of the landscape. She's a woman to whom the word "fun" has probably never occurred. But she soon falls under the spell of, and in love with, the flighty Kathy, putting up with her rock music, buying her clothes and gifts, learning to laugh a little, and hiring another housekeeper so she won't have so much work. Otto, a scruffy down-under Jodie Foster, combines tease, innocence, exuberance, spoiledness, and something darker.

Then comes the accident, followed by the discovery that the money is missing. Could the man Kathy hit have robbed them? Is the money on him? Kathy seems to go a little nuts. She insists that he's alive down in the well, and that he's in love with her. The mind games play out, in deep, sinister swirls of blue. If you're still there at the end you'll either have had a nice nap, or you won't sleep easy for a while.

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews