Puberty Blues (1981)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Trailer-Malcolm; The Big Steal; The Club Trailer-Ghosts Of The Cruel Dead; Dating The Enemy Theatrical Trailer Notes-Reviews Interviews-Cast & Crew Filmographies-Crew Biographies-Crew Gallery-photos, poster and lobby cards
Rating
Year Of Production	1981
Running Time	83:10 (Case: 87)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (47:03)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Bruce Beresford
Studio Distributor	Limelight Prods Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Nell Schofield Jad Capelja Geoff Rhoe Tony Hughes Charles Tingwell
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Tim Finn

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	Yes
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes, frequent
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Puberty Blues is a classic Australian film with special relevance for a bunch of Australians who are now in their late thirties and forties. Although the fundamentals of most of the situations shown in this film remain, the exact circumstances have changed in the last twenty years or so. I was trying describe the film to a friend in his early twenties, and found myself having to explain about how drive-ins used to be popular. I think the decline of the drive-in really corresponds to the rise of video rental, so yes, it's the last twenty years...

    That doesn't mean that this film is irrelevant to anyone not already counting grey hairs. Hardly! This is a film about growing up as a teenager in Australia, about cliques, about peer pressure, about fitting in or being left out. Although some of the language has changed, it's still easily understood today, and the problems these teenagers face are exactly the same today. Well, almost the same — I'd hope that there's a little more sexual equality today, but I could be disappointed.

    This film is centred on one girl, Debbie (Nell Schofield). Debbie and her best friend Sue (Jad Capelja) are on the edge of the coolest clique in school — the surfie chicks. The surfie chicks don't surf, of course. A surfie chick's job in life is to lie on the beach in a skimpy bikini (baking in the sun) and watch her boyfriend surf. When he comes to shore for a break she must trot dutifully up to the shop and get him a Chiko Roll and a coke, or whatever else he wants. She's useful for such errands, or for casual sex, but is otherwise ignored (see what I mean about sexual equality?). At the beginning of the film, Debbie and Sue aren't part of the clique, and that's shown quite clearly. They get their big break into being accepted as surfie chicks when one of the surfies, Bruce (Jay Hackett), thinks Debbie looks nice and asks her to go around with him (interesting courtship ritual). Debbie and Sue rapidly learn the various aspects to being a surfie chick, including the pain of being dropped, and the relief of finding another boyfriend.

    You don't have to be Australian to appreciate the situations in this film, because they are quite common, particularly the development of cliques in high schools. You may have to be Australian to understand the language, though.

    Even though the emotions and situations haven't dated, the clothes have — the school uniform skirts are very short, the male teachers wear shorts, and we haven't seen crocheted bikinis in a while.

    This film was derived from a book of the same name, written by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey, about their own experiences growing up in Australia. I went looking on the web for mention of this book, and found quite a bit, including one quote that horrified me: "it's like an Aussie version of Looking for Alibrandi"... It took me a while to realise that the writer wasn't implying that Looking for Alibrandi wasn't written and set in Australia — she meant that Looking for Alibrandi concerns Australians of Italian origin, while this film is concerned with Australians of no particular ethnic origin.

    If you are a parent, wondering if this film is suitable for your child or teenager, let me point out that the M rating it carries is earned for frequent coarse language, sexual situations, and drug use. Smoking is universal among the surfies and surfie chicks in this film. Marijuana use is common. Hard drugs do appear, although most of them refuse them. Alcohol use and abuse features too. Sex is depicted as something girls do to keep boys from dropping them. This is definitely not a film for children, and you might want to watch it by yourself before letting younger teenagers see it. There is quite a bit of value in it, though, especially in the ending. Ultimately, this film has a positive message, but you have to judge for yourself whether that positive message is worth the rest. If you're wondering, I think it is.

    I distinctly remember seeing Puberty Blues when it first came out — it sticks in my memory quite clearly. It's good to see that the film still has impact today. What's not so good is seeing the state the film is in. But you'll read all about that below...

Video

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced. That's the intended ratio, and just as well, because Bruce Beresford makes a point about the correct aspect ratio in his interview.

    The image is soft, almost as though taken from a videotape master (which you'd think is unlikely, given that it's 16x9 enhanced). Shadow detail is limited, but never troubling. The picture is not especially grainy, but it's really the low-level noise that mars the picture — there's a lot of low-level noise, especially in the outdoor scenes.

    Colour is variable, with some of the outdoor scenes showing rather more orange tones than the indoor, making the girls look sunburned. There aren't any egregious colour artefacts though, just the lack of consistency.

    There are plenty of small film artefacts and some larger ones, but nothing major.

    There's aliasing on pretty much anything that can alias, but it's not particularly troubling. There are moments of moire, but they tend to be small areas. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are no subtitles, which is a shame, because some of the dialogue is sufficiently unclear that subtitles would be a help.

    The disc is single-sided and dual layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change is at 47:03, and it's quite obvious, but it doesn't disturb the flow of the movie too much.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    This disc has a single audio track, in English, provided in Dolby Digital 2.0 (not surround-encoded) at 224kbps.

    The dialogue is mostly fairly clear and generally easy to understand, but quite a bit of it is obviously looped, due to discrepancies in background noise. There are no obvious audio sync issues.

    The music director was Les Gock, but the big songs come from Tim Finn, including the theme song and I Hope I Never (sung by a female voice here, which sounds odd after hearing it so often on the radio sung by a male voice).

    Neither the surrounds nor the subwoofer are used by this straight stereo soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is animated with sound (mostly dialogue). This disc has one unusual feature: the transitions from menu to menu are random, each featuring a spot of trivia — it's a nice touch, and had me zipping back and forth between menus out of curiosity.

Interviews

    Interviews filmed in 2002 with Nell Schofield (7:25) and Bruce Beresford (5:25). Quite interesting to watch, and it's interesting to see what what 17-year-old (in the film) Nell Schofield looks like now. There's also a one page filmography for Bruce Beresford; it might only be one page, but it lists 27 films.

Novel Profile

    Three pages of notes, giving a little background on the authors of the book.

Promotion

• Images — 18 images, of which the last two are the poster and lobby cards for the film
• Theatrical Trailer (2:11) — lots of spoilers
• Reviews — 4 pages reproducing review grabs from newspapers and magazines

Umbrella Propaganda

    An interesting selection of Australian films

• Malcolm (2:11) — with an American voice-over?
• The Big Steal (1:40)
• The Club (2:55)
• Ghosts of the Civil Dead (1:24)
• Dating the Enemy (0:29)

    This title hasn't been released in Region 1 (although this disc is coded for all regions) — the film was not a big success in the USA.

    Puberty Blues is a classic Australian film given a transfer that's not good.

    The video quality is not good.

    The audio quality is adequate, but nothing remarkable.

    The extras are limited, but interesting.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall