The Tale Of Ruby Rose

Stars: Melita Jurisic (Fast Lane, Hunger), Chris Haywood (The Navigator, Dogs In Space). "Outstanding," "Extraordinary" hail reviewers who saw this at the Venice Film Festival. Our guess is that the punch was spiked. Set in the mountains of Tasmania during the 1930s, the story revolves around Ruby Rose's (Melita Jurisic) abnormal fear of the dark. For roughly 90 of the film's 101 minutes, Ruby is afraid of the dark, a fear she expresses verbally in sentences where you could do lunch between the individual words. Ruby's husband Henry, and their adopted son Gem, hunt wallaby and other critters with pelts. When Henry and Gem leave on an extended hunting excursion, the sheltered Ruby decides to go on a quest looking for her grandmother and father down in the valley. And just before the audience goes into a coma, she learns why she's afraid of the dark. It's hard to muster much sympathy for Ruby, whom Jurisic plays as a mumbler with a constant vague look. When Ruby, at the end, offers to tell her son Gem the tale, we know that the poor kid has just been handed a one-way ticket to captive audience hell. There's nothing wrong with a slow movie that gradually builds to a compelling story, but, hey, evolution is faster than The Tale Of Ruby Rose. Audience: The nice cover art, "PG" rating, and heroine-on-a-quest theme will initially draw viewers--then the glacier-slow story, mumbling Australian-accented dialogue, and utter lack of story will turn them off.