Amy

Amy is eight years old, vivacious and creative...and apparently deaf and mute since witnessing the horrible death of her beloved father, a rock musician, three years earlier. Her mother Tanya withdrew from the world in her own way, hiding out with her daughter on a remote Australian farm, but when child welfare agents come snooping around, wondering why Amy doesn't go to school, Tanya flees with Amy to a rundown area of Melbourne, where mother and daughter both begin to tentatively rejoin the world. Rachel Griffiths is extraordinary as a woman so focused on healing her daughter that she tables her own grief--and when she is finally forced to confront her loss, the moment is stunning in its rawness. Ben Mendelsohn is terrific as the bemused folk singer whose friendship with Amy--initiated when he realizes that she can hear him when he sings, and that she can reply in song--brings out the tender side of this cynical man. Young Alana De Roma is wonderfully knowing and heartfelt as Amy, believably tempering a child's joy with anguish. And director Nadia Tass, working from a magical script by David Parker, creates a moving and wise story which recognizes that grief and recovery can be funny and perplexing as well as sad and painful. Recommended. (M. Johanson)