Love, Lust & Lies

Showing at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival: Love, Lust & Lies, directed by Gillian Armstrong

Synopsis from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival website:

In 1976 renowned Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong met three 14-year-old friends, Kerry, Josie, and Diana, at a youth center in Adelaide. A portrait of their adolescence makes up the core of the film Smokes and Lollies, the first of five documentaries capturing the lives of the three ordinary working-class girls (and later women). With breaks of several years, the filmmaker regularly returned to her heroines, and in 1996, when each has an adult daughter, she released Not Fourteen Again, winning the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary. Despite her original plan, in 2009 Armstrong decided to contact her heroines for the last time in order to find out to what extent they had fulfilled their dreams and desires, and whether they can be as honest with the camera and, above all, with themselves as they all once promised. This unique long-term documentary project superbly charts the seemingly ordinary lives of three women, offering a singular look at Australian society from the mid-70s till today.

Netflix It: Oscar and Lucinda

Available from Netflix: Oscar and Lucinda, directed by Gillian Armstrong

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

Australian director Gillian Armstrong directed this Laura Jones adaptation of Peter Carey's 1988 Booker Prize-winning novel. In a lengthy flashback, Oscar Hopkins' great grandson (Geoffrey Rush) narrates the family history that led to his birth. On an Australian farm, Lucinda Leplastrier was tutored by her intelligent mother, a woman who took part in the early feminist movement. Oscar's lonely boyhood in rural England was under the watchful eye of his preacher father. At Oxford to train as a minister, the adult Oscar (Ralph Fiennes) feels he doesn't fit in and develops a passion for gambling, giving his winnings away to the poor. Oscar and Lucinda (Cate Blanchett) meet aboard a ship; he's off to the outback to work as a missionary, and she's returning from London after buying equipment for her glass factory. As mutual misfits, they have an instant attraction and quickly grow close, developing a romantic relationship based on trust. However, the Rev. Dennis Hasset (Ciarán Hinds) and Lucinda are friends, sharing an interest in glass. Convinced they are in love, Oscar embarks on an unusual and difficult task, building a glass church for the reverend, an ambitious project to attempt in the remote wilderness.