RABBIT-PROOF FENCE - I've been promising comments about Philip Noyce's 'Rabbit-Proof Fence' (opened limited, 11/29) for so long that whatever I have to say about it now will probably be a disappointment -- especially considering I saw the movie back in October at the Chicago International Film Festival and have no notes to reflect on. But then this is a movie playing on like five screens in the whole world so this post will be relevant to almost noone. Set in Australia in 1931, the movie is based on the true story of an Aboriginie girl named Molly Craig who was taken from her home along with two friends to a British training facility. According to British policy at the time, "half-caste" children (whose mothers were Aboriginal and whose fathers were white) were required to be removed and trained to work as servants. The end goal was that through marriage the half-caste children would eventually reproduce and somewhere down the genetic line the Aboriginal half would be washed away. It's basically an aristrocratic brand of ethnic cleansing -- the same horror but with tea and crumpets instead of guns and bombs, which is what makes it seem all the more horrific. If your interest isn't sparked yet, I haven't even gotten to the heart of the story, which follows Molly and her friends as they escape from the facility and embark on a 1500-mile journey back home using the titular fence as their guide. That's three kids. 1500 miles. Walking. The movie is a remarkable one, primarily because the story itself is so remarkable. Using non-professional actors and a cinema verite style, Noyce's only misstep is that he marks the line between good (the kind-hearted, happy natives) and evil (the British regulators) a little too neatly, at least in the scenes with Kenneth Branagh who plays A.O. Neville, the man in charge of overseeing the half-castes. The scenes of the Australian landscape are bathed in a warm, yellow glow against a clear-blue sky and shot with simple, fluid camera movements. There are also not as many close-ups, which would cinematically accomplish what the British were doing to the Aboriginies, which is to remove them from their surroundings. In contrast, all of Neville's scenes are a crisp, cold blue with harsh whites and sharp cuts that immediately make you uneasy. It's just a little too obvious for my taste, especially when Branagh is consistently shot at a low angle to signifiy his power. Noyce doesn't want us to think even for a second that their is any kind of nobility in Neville's endeavor -- and there definitely isn't -- but the fact is that evil people very rarely view themselves as being evil. They're just doing what they believe is right, no matter how misguided it might appear to others, or to us 70 years later. Neville is positively sure he is helping the Aboriginies, an irony that Noyce could have toyed with a bit more rather than color-coding who the bad guy is. Switching gears for a second, Sam piqued my interest with something he mentioned in his musings on Wednesday. With regard to 'Monsoon Wedding', he wrote: "Are actors in foreign films inherently more believable than actors (particularly well-known actors) in English-language films." I'll raise you one: Are non-professional actors, especially foreign ones, inherently more believable than professional actors (particularly well-known ones)? I automatically attributed a certain naturality to the behavior of these girls -- actual Aboriginie girls playing Aboriginie girls -- that I'm not sure I would have granted to regular actors. And I find that I always have this reaction with foreign non-actors. Is it because they are speaking in a foreign tongue and our ears are not able to pick up the kind of inflections that sometimes make a performance seem fake? Take Ed Burns' 'The Brothers' McMullen, for example. Burns cast is actual girlfriend at the time, Maxine Bahns, who had never acted before, to play his love interest in the movie. And really all she is doing is playing herself -- a 20-something living in New York, probably a student, which she was at the time. But her performance is textbook bad acting, horrible even by low-budget indie standards. Why couldn't I buy her performance, but every time I see a non-actor in a foreign movie -- any of Rossellini's and Fellini's neorealist efforts, the recent 'Himalaya', and so on -- I am inevitably convinced buy it? I'm not sure, but Noyce's semi-neorealist aesthetic worked for me and I was moved by the story and the performances of the girls, particularly the lead.

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