The Rage In Placid Lake is an Australian film that I didn't quite get around to seeing at the movies. Luckily, it's now on DVD, and I highly recommend it.
Ben Lee, famous for rhyming the word "stoic" when he was about 14, plays Placid Lake, the child of two tragic hippies. His parents are portrayed wonderfully by Miranda Richardson (who's about the only female actor in all of Blackadder) and the "And Son" himself, Garry McDonald. They raised Placid on a steady diet of hippy nonsense (a feeling I'm all too familiar with) and is an eternal misfit because of it.
Placid (the movie, and the character) play with the notion of (non-)conformity in the midst of the usual teen angst stuff. On the one hand, Placid's already hugely non-conformist, with his "enlightened" attitudes and holistic vision. On the other, he's rebelling in exactly the way his parents, who are too fully absorbed in their own extended hippiedom to really care, want him to be. And this forms the crux of the film: how should Placid run his life? Should he try to "fit in" with his peers, or follow the path laid out for him by his parents?
The love interest role, played by Rose Byrne, has a conveniently symmetric situation where she too is pleasing her father through her academic achievements. Her own discoveries of self neatly parallel Placid's own wild swings, until the inevitable conclusion (I'm not spoiling anything here).
The movie's funny, doubly funny if you were at all unpopular/unconventional at school. The script is filled with multi-layered and self-reflective social commentary and gels well with my own world views. Ben Lee is not an actor, and probably can't act. This doesn't matter, though, since this is his first (only?) film, and he suits the role well. The only problem is that he always seems to be smugly taking the piss. He does wear a shirt well, I must say.
If you haven't seen Placid Lake, put it on the list, it's good.
Posted by Casey at March 19, 2004 09:01 AM