Who payed the critics

People are voting emotionally.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Story in short. Celia Carmichael lives with her parents in a small village in Australia during the fifties. It starts sad as her grandmother dies with who she had a close bond (shown in a few flashbacks). She finds comfort with their new neighbours: a family with 3 kids and in a cute rabbit which she gets as birthday present. However several conflicts arise as her father doesn't want her to play with the neighbour's kids any more as their parents are communists. Because of a rabbit plague the police is also trying to confiscate the rabbits of all rabbit owners. Last but not least Celia and her friends are in a feud with some classmates lead by Stephanie Burke daughter of the local police officer.Why is Celia such an interesting character? Well the director(and actress) does a hell of a job showing how versatile Celia as lead actually is. She can be a pretty bad girl when things don't go her way even though she is not the girl to pull pranks on others. She only acts with a certain revenge when she feels they did her or her friends injustice. On the other hand she also shows a very caring side in her scenes with her pet rabbit, how she stands up for her neighbours. And not to forget like every child she has fears which are cleverly shaped by some creepy muddy monsters, gotten from a story the school teacher read to the kids before the holidays started. No those monsters are not the real horror elements they exist only in her dreams and imagination. But the more disappointments she endures the more real they seem to become for her.The real horror elements are shown in a few strong scenes which left quite some impression on me. I'm not going to give them away, without any gore or violence involved they struck me quite hard. It eventually leads to Celia doing a terrible thing and despite it was wrong I just couldn't condemn her. In the end only her best friend Heather was witness of Celia's crime even though I had the feeling her mother also found out.

This film made me uneasy. It's so real, so true to life, so light and so heavy, understated and over the top. It captures all the wild uneasiness and expression and off-center humanity of childhood, and makes it breathless and fully alive. It takes you all over the place. There's so many things going on, so many events and strange sights and sounds. The kids are swept along through some kind of strange journey, a backward and breathless running through life. This is not a horror film, or even a fantasy. It is a straightforward drama, that not only captures real life but delves deep into the sort of confused reality of imagination that children so often confuse with everything else.This film made me uncomfortable. At times, it's alive and pure and safe and quiet. At other times, it's brash and explosive and emotionally uneasy. In the end, it's dark and deeply disturbed. You don't see it coming, but in a way, the ending colors everything that's come before. It's the believability that makes it so strange, so hard.Rebecca Smart plays Celia. She shows a range of character that totally beyond expectation. She's confident, scared, awake, aware, confused. It takes a lot of time to understand all the complexities at work in her. Celia makes no sense, or maybe all too much. In the end, she becomes a more complete person. One who will live with things most of us could hardly even imagine.Geoffrey Simpson's cinematography is totally realist. There's no strange photography, no experimentation. It's filmed like a regular story, without exaggeration. And it's all the better for it. This film's writer/director Ann Turner (who's done little else of note), creates a strange and powerful story with her understanding of character. She pushes through all of her strangest, most uneasy ideas without ever making you feel like you're not seeing real lives. Chris Neal creates some strongly effective music. It is at once timeless and perfectly fitting. It sounds little like any movie music I'd previously heard, but quite exactly fitting to the images. Otherworldly without feeling out of place."Celia" is not an average film. It sees and expresses things in a way utterly like any other in the history of film. It has no peers in this sense, and that alone makes it one of the most powerful cinematic experiences I've ever had. But the nature in how it grafts darkness to light, fear to joy, is disconcerting. If you still remember childhood, you can find yourself in the scenes of "Celia". This is not sensationalism. This is one little girl's precarious existence.

As far as I can see, "Celia" is a complex movie about childhood that lacks something. It fails to make the viewer understand the way the heroine feels and thinks. The heroine is Celia, a young girl who grows up in Australia in the 1950s.I must mention that I was way disappointed by the contents of the movie. If only because the plot summaries I read about it in diverse magazines turned out pretty wrong. They were like: "9-year-old Celia has no playmates except for her rabbit. When a policeman takes away the rabbit from her, she vows revenge." Alright, but that's not the gist of it. Celia is not an isolated or lonely little girl, first of all, she's rather horrifyingly lively. She does have playmates, three neighbour kids whose parents are communists. Celia actually spends more time with these kids and with their mother than she does with her own parents. Moreover, many scenes deal only with these children's play. Most of the time they play in some desert landscape, which seems kind of grotesque, where there is caves and rocks and sand - but hardly any people or animals. Grotesque - that's what the movie appears to be like. We have these two parties of kids: The children of the communists and the "communist haters" and they fight a rather serious battle. And we have that crazy idea of the government that rabbits were pests. I don't object to "grotesque" stories, but a certain deal of irony is required to make them enjoyable - this movie lacks irony.Still we get a good impression of how complex the worlds children make up of their fantasy really are. We also learn how adults don't have any idea about the thoughts children have, about the crazy wars they deliver, about the friendship or the hate they feel. As this movie is seen through the eyes of a child, of course the adult's "play", i.e. the hate towards communists, is not dealt with very openly.That wouldn't matter, if we were really offered the opportunity to identify with the child. But here the movie lacks care and empathy, we don't get close enough to little Celia - played by Rebecca Smart. This young actress doesn't do a bad job, that's for sure, but she isn't outstanding either. She's working about on the same level as the whole movie is.I'll vote "6" for "slightly above mediocre", v e r y slightly, honestly.

Celia is a 9 year old girl with a lot of imagination. She lives with her family in South Australia in the fifties. She has a strong will, lots of charm and wit. Her family are communists, which makes them kind of outcasts in the society, and Celia has to fight mobbing schoolmates as well as discriminating teachers. She manages to do that very well. All this gives a rather frank and funny description of childhood problems, and Rebecca Smart plays her part extremely well. But Celia is not just a charming kid - when she hates, she really hates. And when she fantasizes about mysterious evil animals, she can't quite distinguish fantasy from reality. Which might seem rather normal, but Celia lives in a house, where a loaded gun is available... This movie is very entertaining, giving a varied picture of growing-up - and one can really feel the emotions and confusions, which is a part of being nine years old. At times the film becomes perhaps a bit too confusing - it can be quite difficult to follow the girls vivid imagination. But I'll guess, you have the same problem in the real world...