I wasn't looking forward to watching a film portraying a teenager's life week after week over 52 weeks. So I did have low expectations, but I loved this film. What it showed was how one girl, Billie, must cope with an incredibly stressful home life (her mother is becoming a man) while dealing with the usual challenges of adolescence. How she does this is what the film is about. One of the most refreshing aspects was that here, on the surface, is a very much different from 'normal' Australian family -- apart from her Mum's sexual identity crisis, Billie's youngish uncle lives with them, and the uncle's small daughter is an occasional visitor. Billie's Dad is a loving presence but he has his own partner. But by also delving into the family life of Billie's female friend, whose Dad is absent and Mum has depression -- I think the writers were trying to say that no family is perfect, and we all have our woes and worries. And that maybe Billie's family is representative of today's Australia, in that it is diverse. The format -- filming Billie and those around her every week for a year -- could have been terribly monotonous, but the variety of scenes and themes, interspersed with video footage taken by Billie and her friends, effectively breaks this up. The film is well shot, directed and edited. The acting is great and the script is taut. There is plenty of humour and the fairly explicit sex scenes are very much in context and not gratuitous.
Review of 52 Tuesdays
