Perfect Strangers

Sam Neill, Rachel Blake (Lantana) and Joel Toebeck star in Gaylene Preston’s genre-bending twisted-tale of a pick up gone wrong on the South Island’s rugged West Coast or, “chick flick – deconstructed … subversion of the Cinderalla story” as Sam Neill describes it, interviewed in the SMH. David Stratton in Variety: “Preston’s best work in film to date … Blake is sensational.” Evan Williams in The Australian: Preston has come up with something “stylish, funny, and disturbing. And it’s a genuine original. Preston balances the shifting moods and layers of the story with great skill … there are dazzling touches of visual invention … Alun Bollinger’s camerawork is beautifully atuned to the lonely desolation of the landscape.” Williams name-checks Zemeckis, Mostow and Speilberg as directors who’ve handled the same material, but warns that, “Preston has deeper ideas in store”.