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On
My Own
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The Australian-Italian-Canadian co-production On My Own is an odd fish: it comes on like a typical episode of TV's Degrassi High treated in the intense manner of a Joseph Losey film such as The Servant (1963). On one level, it is a thoroughly familiar rite-of-passage teen drama. Simon (Matthew Ferguson) is going through changes: new school, separated parents, stirrings of pubescent libido. For all his momentary angst and uncertainty, we know he will emerge from this troubled phase as a right, regular kid. But then there's Matthew's mother (Judy Davis), who is schizophrenic. Sweeping into his life for a sudden, brief visit, she destabilises every rule and protocol of normal society. This mother draws her child into a troubled and tantalising world without recourse to the usual interpersonal defences and barriers. Whenever Mum is around, On My Own becomes a tormented art movie, full of silences, mirror reflections, and exquisitely painful, drawn out scenes of ambiguous eroticism. Australian celebrity Bob Ellis described it baldly and disparagingly as the story of "a boy who fails to have incest with his mother". On this art-movie plane, debut feature director Antonio Tibaldi really comes into his own, evoking the early work of Bernardo Bertolucci. On a pure level of cinema craft, the film is, in a modest way, confident and accomplished. And it dares to tread a little in that fuzzy zone where social, personal and sexual roles suddenly become fluid and intermingle. Although Australian viewers may dimly recall some misguided squawks in the media of the time about the suitability of On My Own for nomination in the country's Australian Film Institute Awards – given its co-production nature – this modest, compelling, rather mysterious movie is well worth a look. © Adrian Martin October 1993 |
