puberty blues 1981 coming-of-age film directed by Bruce Beresford based on the novel Cathy Lette as well as Gabriel Carey. It tells about the life of two high school girls on the verge of teenage angst; sex, surfing, school and socializing with a cool crowd. The film is set in Australia in the late 1970s, especially on and around the beaches of Cronulla, an area of southern Sydney, a middle-class coastal suburb.
puberty blues came out at the height of the Australian New Wave, a period of cinema in the late 20th century when Australian films were gaining international recognition and Australian directors such as Peter Weir and George Miller were noticed. Despite this, there was still a certain… A sense of Australian storytelling encouraged when the films came out, from the gritty apocalypse Crazy Max, to the psychedelic nightmare of the outback Picnic at Hanging Rock, Australia’s New Wave rarely left the bush, let alone a very peculiar suburb south of the capital. This is not Byron or Bondy, Sutherland was introduced to the international public through puberty blues, and it was introduced to them warts and all.
When you watch trailers for a movie after it’s released, especially in the United States, you see the image of a high school movie full of sun, surf and high school fun taking shape. This perception is correct in a way, Cronulla Beach is the focus of the film, surfing is one of the main controversies, and the triumphant ending has a lot to do with it. This is a movie about youth recklessness, house parties, cheating tests, bus fights with two charming young friends, Debbie (Nell Schofield) and Sue (Jad Capel), in the center. The film is hilarious, showing both the good and bad times of adolescence, experimentation and risk as a rite of passage, the universal language of growing up.
The specificity of the time and place is shown not only in the location, but also in the jargon that pervaded the film, and the words “moll away” and “dead set” were part of the Australian Urban Vocabulary at the time. Even such an insignificant thing as a school uniform, a common thing in Australia, wears short and stylish clothes for the summer. The beach is a social paradise where kids surf, cause trouble, sunbathe, and even ride horses, and the house feels like a safe place for the characters. It’s a cold, summery hangout movie with wholesome, inspiring female friendships in the center, that is, on one side.
A realistic look at a high school in 1970s Australia
On the other hand, this is not Rigdemont High, and while the end of the movie gives the feeling that Debbie and Sue will be fine, some of the characters are. Neither the book nor the film shy away from the widespread issues that plagued this period and the “surf culture” of the 1970s, and chose to show it both candidly and almost casually, that was life at the time, but that doesn’t do it well. Corporal punishment of students by teachers, casual smoking in the toilet, and fights on school buses and on beaches were expected. These things only become problems when you actually go home and think about it, especially here in the 2020s. puberty blues, however, it goes even deeper and darker. There was misogyny that was pretty much run-of-the-mill, an expectation of sexual gratification that was completely normal when the boys around him treated him like trash. “Chicks don’t surf,” but they have to look after them. The film shows this in a non-romantic or comedic way, rejecting the idea of just putting up with it, putting viewers in the shoes of girls who are expected to act as such.
While the movie shows that some of the mistakes you make as teenagers aren’t the biggest mistakes you’ll ever make, they do try to show that some mistakes are very big when you watch the characters stop using drugs and even overdosing. which is portrayed in a climax that shakes you to the core. All fun and games until the ambulance arrives. Parents don’t know what they shouldn’t know, because children don’t want to get in trouble because they think their parents don’t understand. Lack of adult supervision or intervention proves to be devastating and even deadly.
Not all beaches and sun
While there are actions that have proven to have dire consequences, this is not a moral game about staying clean, virgin, and sober. puberty blues thrives on the knowledge that Lette, Carey and Beresford had: morality plays are simply ineffective and unrealistic. There are teenagers who will inevitably have sex, experiment with alcohol and drugs, and succumb to peer pressure, despite what any adult, book or movie, will tell them. Adolescence is not about not making mistakes, but about learning from the ones you make and puberty blues doesn’t glorify bad choices, exaggerate them to the level of comedy, or crucify characters as if all mistakes are created equal.
With new Australian adult content coming in the near future such as Broken heart on Netflix it’s always nice to look back at where it all started, it’s safe to say that puberty blues set the standard for everything that came after it. The film is not a caricature of Australian life - it just was, down to the specific suburb where the story is set. The beach is lovely but the location is not as glamorous as in the tourist ads and neither are the people. puberty blues is not only one of the best Australian films to watch in the summer, but also an intimate look at teenage life from a refreshingly feminine perspective that allows the characters to make the same mistakes as you.
Cool kids aren’t always cool, sometimes they’re just dumb bums, being a teenager sucks sometimes, but as long as you have at least one good friend, you can handle it.
Source: Collider
