Cinema
Walkabout
Nicolas Roeg · 1971
Synopsis
A father takes his daughter, a teenager, and his young son on a picnic in the outback; his suicide leaves the two children alone, far from everything, and the girl must look after her brother. Running short of provisions, they find a waterhole that soon dries up. An Aboriginal teenager, out on his own for the ordeal that is to make him a man, discovers them, and they travel together across the desert.
Context
The director's second film and the first he signs alone, it is drawn from the novel by James Vance Marshall, adapted by Edward Bond, with music by John Barry. Jenny Agutter plays the girl, Luc Roeg, the director's son, the little boy, and David Gulpilil, a dancer who had never acted, the young Aboriginal. The former cinematographer interweaves documentary images of insects and lizards with the story. In competition at Cannes in 1971 according to Le Pacte's press kit, the film was released in the United Kingdom in April 1971 and in France on 23 February 1972.
Who it is for
A film in English of about a hundred minutes, with an elliptical narrative, released in France under the title La Randonnée.
Prizes and reception
A classic for Avenoctum; Kim Newman, in Empire, judges it dated but praises Jenny Agutter's revelatory performance.
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