Look Both Ways

Winner of four AFI Awards, Sarah Watt’s prismatic and improbably funny tale of looming tragedy is independent Australian cinema at its off-kilter best.

An Adelaide artist who earns her crust as a painter of sympathy card seascapes, Meryl – played by Justine Clarke, stepping out from Play School’s square window – is prone to morbidly nightmarish fantasies, lovingly rendered in hand-drawn animations. On her way home from her father’s funeral, Meryl has a genuine run-in with the reaper when she witnesses the death of a pedestrian in a train accident. This tragedy becomes the unlikely basis for a fraught whirlwind romance with a photojournalist (William McInnes) dealing with demons of his own, as well as the fulcrum of the film’s multiple interlocking portraits of grief.

This auspicious live-action debut by Sydney-born, Melbourne-schooled animator and filmmaker Sarah Watt premiered in 2005, when it screened at MIFF alongside a retrospective of her animated shorts. In addition to sweeping that year’s AFI Awards, Watt also picked up the Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery Award. Two decades on, Look Both Ways stands as a prime and, against all odds, uplifting example of the breezily black humour that has characterised a number of the nation’s most iconic films.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival