Oranges and Sunshine

Bea says: Seen for a bargain price in the small Yorkshire market town of Malton - but Cecil will probably tell you more about that!

I was keen to see this film when Cecil suggested it as it is about my home country (Australia), and also about a now fairly famous (or perhaps infamous) episode in its history - the deportation of thousands of British children in care to the "colony", to start a new life. Only this new life, rather than being oranges and sunshine, was usually exploitation and abuse at the hands of the institutions and adults who were supposed to be caring for them.

When I was at university in the 1990s, a fairly groundbreaking drama was screened in Australia which told the story of these "Home Children" (The Leaving of Liverpool, a joint ABC/BBC production, 1993), This drama had a profound impact on the national psyche, as this true story was barely known at the time, and was at times pretty hard to watch as it followed the story of two children who were deported, one to labour in a quarry at an isolated church children's home, and the other into unpaid servitude on a sheep station. Both were abused. It was urban legend that the Head of the ABC had pushed for the making of the drama - because he had been one of the "Home Children" himself.

Oranges and Sunshine, however, looks at this episode in history from a different perspective - that of the British social worker who investigated the cases of the now adult children who had (usually) no papers, patchy memories of life before, and few or disparate family ties. The film portrays the horror of their lives through her work, listening, uncovering and advocating, and it shows the cost to her in terms of health and family.

Although I am not sure the initial scene was required (a bit stereotypical perhaps, and certainly not usual practice for social workers these days, although perhaps it was still in the late 1980s), the film was well made and very watchable, despite it's heavy subject matter. Hugo Weaving really stood out for me, and gave an incredibly moving performance as Jack, and the Loach connection was easy to see in the "real-life" feeling of the adult Home Children (actors) talking about their experiences.

It was also a nice treat for me that it was filmed in my home town of Adelaide (despite not being set there), and even Cecil was able to recognise some key places!
***1/2

Cecil says: As a kid, we had often driven through Malton at a snail's pace because traffic was always at a bottleneck there. We'd never really stopped. So I didn't even know of the existence of the Palace Cinema until I was surfing the net trying to find a film somewhere in Yorkshire that didn't involve Harry Potter, aliens, cars or cartoons.

Up popped this film, which Bea and I saw alone in the Palace Cinema 'lounge' film club room, which sits 10 people max, and is used for showing films you may have missed first time round when they come out on DVD. What an excellent concept; we'll certainly be back!

As to the film, as always the opening scene sets the tone for me, and for anyone 50 or over in the UK, this opening scene just has to remind you of a scene from Cathy Come Home, that groundbreaking drama in the mid-60s that so challenged established ways of dealing with single mothers, the homeless and 'broken families'.

Some way into the film and the social worker sits down with her husband (also a social worker, I think) to discuss her initial findings. There was something about the dialogue here that came across a bit too stilted, a bit too keen to put across the 'message': "What you're talking about here is the illegal mass deportation of children".

And it suddenly reminded me of what annoys me about Ken Loach films: it's they're repetitive lecturing on the moral issue he is dealing with in each film; he tends to ram it down the viewer's throat, even if you got the message in scene one and basically sympathise. It's the kind of thing that has put me off going to Ken Loach films for some years now.

Then, lo and behold, in the credits at the end of this film, who directed Oranges and Sunshine, but Jim Loach. A quick search in Wikipedia, and what do we find out: he's the son of Ken. A good ten years older than Ken was when he made Cathy Come Home, but somehow unable to move away from his Dad's style. Maybe that's no bad thing, if you like the style, but I'm not keen on being preached to when I go to the movies, and this film toyed with preachiness...

That said, it was a compelling story. All the more so for me personally, since these shipments of kids were still going on when I had my trip-of-a-lifetime to Australia in 1967, on an ocean liner (as you did in those days), accompanied thankfully by my parents...

Funnily enough, for a Loach film (sorry, Jim, I know it's your first feature, so I shouldn't tar you totally with your father's brush), there was almost too little political analysis of people like the Brothers running the priory (and abusing the kids). We never really find out whether it is they who send the threatening thugs round to harass Margaret. And, given what Bea says about the TV series they made of what happened, this could have been an awful lot grimmer in the telling.

"Did you enjoy the film?" they cheerily asked, as we came out of our exclusive viewing room. Enjoy is probably not the right word, but it was compelling. I'd recommend this film to others, but if you have the choice of this or the TV series Bea mentions, I'd have chosen the latter for delving deeper into the subject.

***