My Brilliant Career (1979, Australian)

Why have I never seen this film before? I have a weakness for strong heroines in period pictures, seeing that A Room With a View was one of my first favorite movies. In Gillian Armstrong's debut feature, Judy Davis plays Sybylla Melvyn, a headstrong young woman growing up in the Australian bush in the early 20th century. No one quite knows what to do with Sybylla, who is convinced that she can forge a "career" above all other things - love, family, money, and social expectation. While watching, I was reminded of another film I watched recently, Year of the Dog, which likewise plays with the viewer's expectations of romance and independence. Career is a wonderful film, introducing ideas about femininity that Anderson has continued to play with throughout her career. The same could be said of Judy Davis - Career was her second film, heralding other early roles that would be similarly complicated, as in A Passage to India and Impromptu.

And how sexy was Sam Neill back then?