Load of rubbish!!

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The visual style and irregular story structure of this one is almost too unique at first. It really catches you off guard and feels strange and uncomfortable for the first couple of scenes. However, once the road trip starts and it becomes a two-character journey, the awkwardness settles down and allows you to become more relaxed and involved. The three main flashback scenes feel unnecessary and distracting at first, but once we make it to the finale everything comes full circle and all of the 'unecessary' filler from before just adds more and more to the complexities of Rose's character. So the entire film is pretty much just a buildup for the finale, which can be annoying and unstructured. The final payoff also isn't nearly worth the amount of seemingly pointless distractions throughout. Also the character of J.M. was extremely pointless and annoying. His only reasoning for being in the story is to propel B.G.'s story and give her a way of getting to where she needs to go. He doesn't develop at all, and we never learn anything about his ridiculously mysterious past. It's no bother though, because I would suffer any kind of torture in order to see Rose's performance. There is honestly no way to describe how utterly perfect she is. It's the second greatest female performance I've ever seen. She handles so much inner pain, turmoil and emotions that I can't even imagine what playing the part must have done to her. She's adorable, heartbreaking, hilarious, annoying, upsetting and strong all in one singular face. And she does all of this without an actor's best weapon; their eyes. It's the stuff legends are made of, and one of the five greatest performances of all time. Anything is worth enduring to see that performance.

Wong Kar-Wai ("In the Mood for Love") meets Jim Jarmusch ("Broken Flowers") and flirts with Wim Wenders ("Paris, Texas") and David Lynch ("The Elephant Man", "Blue Velvet"). That'd be a simplified way of describing "The Goddess of 1967", a dazzling, unique road movie written and directed by Clara Law ("Floating Life").The goddess of the title isn't a woman, but the nickname of a Citroën DS, a famous car designed in the 50's. A young Japanese man (Rikiya Kurokawa) dreams of buying that car, and he travels to Australia after he finds an offering on the net. He has an unpleasant surprise when he gets there, and then embarks on a road trip through the outback with a mysterious, red-haired blind girl (Rose Byrne, who deservedly won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival and was robbed of an Oscar nod).Byrne is the soul of this film. She has some of the saddest eyes I've ever seen, an exotic, captivating beauty and one of the most cinematic faces of the past years (her dance scene at the bar is anthologic - probably my favourite since Uma Thurman's in "Pulp Fiction"). She's been in lots of different films since her breakthrough, from blockbusters (Star Wars II, Troy) to indies (City of Ghosts, The Dead Girl), period dramas (I Capture the Castle, Marie Antoinette) to horror/sci-fi (28 Weeks Later, Sunshine), has proved herself extremely versatile and deserves to be a big name. But special kudos go to Clara Law, her co-writer Eddie Ling-Ching Fong and cinematographer Dion Beebe (Oscar winner for "Memoirs of a Geisha"), responsible for the breathtaking visuals (Aussie landscapes seldom looked so gorgeous).Incest, murder, blindness aren't light issues, and a less talented director could make an imbroglio with this material. Fortunately, Clara Law knows what she's talking about and her film is a cinematic poem - sad, sometimes disturbing, but not depressing (I have no idea how could someone classify this as a comedy, though). She shows much more talent than other contemporary female avant-garde directors, such as the overrated Claire Denis ("Beau Travail") or Lynne Ramsay ("Morvern Callar"). "The Goddess of 1967" is a vigorous film that deserves to be discovered. My vote is 10.

Ended up seeing this film(looked like it was shot on HD camera though) on Sundance Channel this morning by coincident, or otherwise I would never see it or known/heard of it for the rest of my life although I see films indiscrimatorily and very frequently.Despite the buzz it received at festivals around the world, it's just too damn hard to find films like this. Plot is rather interesting... a young Japanese guy coming to Auttraria to pick up his car. Indeed this reminds me of Jim Jarmusch's "Mystery Train", which definitely must have inspired the writers. Cinematography... from student cinematographer's point of view, was generic. It looked like just another graduate thesis from every film school around America: Tarkovsky-alikes. Personally I am tired of seeing films like that. Production designer and sound people didn't do their jobs so that the film made me think that it was a student film(, and scene at a noodle stand in Japan... too fake, man!).

I just finished viewing this movie (The Goddess of 1967) that my roommate had rented and was quite moved by it. On a basic level, it's a tale of contrasts. That of a naive, young Japanese man (Rikiya Kurokawa) and a blind Australian girl, Deidre (Rose Byrne). The movie tells of their journey through the Australian outback after the Japanese man travels to Australia in search of the car of his dreams, a classic French Citroen. Of course it's much deeper than that. The trip is not a vacation, but a journey of release particularly for the young woman who has been tormented for most of her short life by the horrible memories of sexual abuse and a mother who failed to stop it. Unbeknownst to the young man he has been taken on a ride that will open his eyes to a world he never knew existed. In return, Deidre, encounters many things she has never experienced before from a man. Those are compassion, honesty and true love. There is one wonderful scene where he teaches her to dance in a lonely bar in the middle of nowhere. To see the joy in the face of someone who has, in her unfortunate life, rarely experienced such feelings is truly uplifting. I had to watch that scene more than once. In the end, Deidre, finds the peace she is looking for. Perhaps not in the way she thought she might, but she does. And that's something she so much deserves.