SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: Day 6

Sundance Bloodied

The remarkable Aussie film Australian Rules has been quite the hit here at Sundance, much to the surprise of producer Mark Lazarus and first-time director Paul Goldman. This magnificent Aussie feature, set in South Australia’s barren Prospect Bay, begins as a wry football comedy before slowly enveloping the audience in a powerful and relentless study of racism.

Though it centres on Aboriginal themes and characters, director Goldman, whose debut feature is an ambitious and profound work, insists that it stretches beyond the parochialism of Australia.

“I’m sure international audiences will respond to it immensely.” Based on audience responses here, he may well be right.

Bloody Sunday

From themes of injustice in Australian Rules to the British docudrama Bloody Sunday, which has had a positive response in Park City and heated controversy back in Blighty.

The film, which was supported by a 250,000 pound grant, has raised howls of protest in establishment circles for its "partisan" account of the horrific day 30 years ago (30 January 1972) when members of the British paratroop regiment shot dead 13 unarmed civilians taking part in an anti-internment civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland. The armed forces said that they believed members of the crowd were going to fire on them first.

The tragedy, which became known as Bloody Sunday, marked the beginning of quarter-century-long period of terrorist violence known as ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Bloody Sunday is an impressively mounted film, an in-your-face account of one horrific day and what it sees as the British callousness that pervaded it.

Paul Greengrass the film's director is clear about his intentions. "The purpose of this film is to tell a story that the British can remember and the Irish can forget, and we can move on in peace. That's the spirit in which I made it."

Featuring a strong performance by Northern-Ireland-born-and-bred James Nesbitt, the film packs a wallop though refuses to flesh-out characters, which is a major flaw. But for a gripping re-examination of this horrific day, Bloody Sunday is exceptional.

Birthday Girl was a somewhat different experience - one of the most entertaining and beguiling films of the Festival. A sexy, dark comedy thriller, Birthday Girl casts a luminous Nicole Kidman as a Russian mail-order bride who creates havoc for bank clerk Ben Chaplin. A slight but engaging romp of a movie, Kidman continues to impress one with her flawless range, and here she is convincingly Russian, very sexy, tough and ultimately vulnerable.