Samson and Delilah

Starring Rowan McNamara, Marissa Gibson. Directed by Warwick Thornton. R16.

A grim, at times searing portrait of bleak Aboriginal life in the Outback Samson and Delilah is a mixture of intentional tedium punctuated with jolts of drama and touches of tenderness.

Debut director Warwick Thornton initially depicts the humdrum, disheartening daily routines of two teenage Aboriginals - Samson (Rowan McNamara), a listless, idle youth who sniffs petrol fumes from the moment he wakes, and Delilah (Marissa Gibson), who cares for her aged, immobile Nana and helps with her paintings in a remote Australian desert community of heat, flies, ants and ennui.

For 40 minutes the film deliberately chronicles their repetitive, barren existence - a risky rendering in that watching monotony for such a duration can be monotonous in itself.

But when a death and violence abruptly intrude, it's even more jarring for the enervating context in which they occur - and there's one later moment guaranteed to stun in its sudden occurrence.

Samson and Delilah - both played by newcomers with such convincing naturalness that they could be people in a documentary about Aboriginal youth - become runaways who head for Alice Springs but in effect have nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Their own poignant, developing relationship is wordless, mainly due to inarticulate Samson never speaking to Delilah - partly for a reason later revealed and due to his continual mind-numbing petrol-sniffing.

They are hapless, hopeless outsiders in their own homeland - treated as inferior or invisible beings to be ripped off, beaten, raped or simply ignored. The only human kindness they encounter comes, pointedly, from a homeless man (Scott Thornton). In the end, any hope for their future lies in their resilience, luck and caring for one another.

It's a challenging, discomforting movie to watch, both in terms of storytelling style and its wrenching, dispiriting content. It's also very much a visual experience, with Thornton immersing us in Samson and Delilah's world in a way that is as hypnotic as it is slow-moving and timeless. It's a tortoise of a movie but one that ultimately will win your heart while troubling your mind.

- © Fairfax NZ News