by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sarah Nicolazzo, Max Nappo, Rosa Nix, Hannah Sims
Intro:
… a quietly intense character drama …
The latest indie feature from writer/director Adrian Ortega (Cerulean Blue) sees him continue to mine the void of connection between people for the raw emotional ore within.
Westgate’s title and opening text refer to the West Gate Bridge disaster, where a combination of shoddy design (Freeman Fox & Partners) and construction (World Services And Construction) resulted in what remains the worst industrial accident in Australian history.
With that as the main ‘foundation’, Ortega tells the story of a family left behind by that 1970 tragedy. Specifically, working single mother Netta (Sarah Nicolazzo) as she goes on a 24-hour mad dash through western Melbourne to scrape together enough cash to keep a roof over her head, while also caring for her twelve-year-old son Julian (Max Nappo).
Between the tightened timeline of the narrative, the cramped 4:3 aspect ratio, and the intense performances, this is an incredibly stressful ninety minutes and change. Nicolazzo presents Ortega’s new benchmark for sharpened characterisation, as her fierceness at the world around her and stubbornness is palpable to witness.
The second-generation Australian lens that the story is presented with, allows for that frustration to come through, but the most frustrating element (and this is actually a positive for a film that is this anxious) is that, to a certain degree, this is an adrenaline hell of her own making.
The film’s approach to showing the visceral and unvarnished reality of the working class links in with the works of Andrea Arnold and Ken Loach, where facsimilia of answers must be teased out of the unwilling, and happiness is just being able to say that you survived.
Through the frenetic haze of cigarette smoke and sterile hospital air, Ortega’s intended tribute to the working women of his own childhood comes through strongly and proudly. It openly acknowledges the key hubristic part of Netta’s personality that keeps holding her back, but never with any active judgement towards her. Fitting the story in-between West Gate and the looming harbinger of Y2K, her journey is given the breathing room to show just how much is weighing on her and how genuinely unfair it is (unfair as the world is at its baseline). It highlights resilience as a decent attribute, but not to the point where it shuts you off not just from those who are trying to help, but those you are also trying to help.
Westgate is a quietly intense character drama that honours working parents whose days feel like entire weeks. Sarah Nicolazzo’s superb central performance anchors the exacting but effective characterisation, telling a culturally and temporally precise story that ends up speaking a lot of truth even for those outside of its margins. It’s an empathetic and understanding depiction of the effects of grief and being cornered by circumstance, conveying disturbance as smoothly as it does hope and love.
