High Tide (1987 film)
| High Tide | |
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Movie poster
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| Directed by | Gillian Armstrong |
| Produced by | Sandra Levy |
| Written by | Laura Jones |
| Starring |
Judy Davis Jan Adele Claudia Karvan |
| Music by | Peter Best |
| Cinematography | Russell Boyd |
| Edited by | Nicholas Beauman |
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Release date
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Running time
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104 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | A$3,750,000 |
High Tide is a 1987 Australian drama film starring Judy Davis, from a script by Laura Jones, about the mother-daughter bond, directed by Gillian Armstrong. Armstrong reported that when she began work on High Tide she pinned a note above her desk: "Blood ties. Water. Running Away." Jan Adele plays Lilli's mother-in-law Bet, in her film debut.
Two-time Academy Award nominee Judy Davis (Sybylla in My Brilliant Career, Adela Quested in A Passage to India) plays Lili, a back-up singer for an Elvis Presley impersonator, who lives on the edge of show business. She is stranded in a small coastal town and befriends teenager Ally (Claudia Karvan) without knowing she is the daughter left behind as an infant after her husband's sudden death.
Lilli is one of three backing singers for a touring Elvis impersonator until she is fired. Then, left alone at the beginning of winter she is stranded in a ramshackle beach town on the windswept coast of New South Wales. This remote, working class, tourist-town has a pervasive sense of rootlessness and movement. The people survive by changing their occupations with the seasons and work hard in small businesses. Here, stuck in the Mermaid Caravan Park, she encounters her teenage daughter Ally (Claudia Karvan). When Lilli's young surfer husband had died, she felt lost; she gave up her baby to her mother-in-law, Bet. Lilli has been drifting ever since, and getting wasted. Bet is a rowdy, belligerent woman, devoted to Ally—she has taken care of her for 13 years but she has no idea how unhappy the girl is. Lilli has an immediate rapport with the lonely Ally even before she knows that Ally is her daughter, and after she knows, she can't take her eyes off her. They belong with each other. but Lilli's terrified of taking on the responsibilities of motherhood, and Bet tells her she's riff-raff. When we first see Ally she is in the water; surfing is—"her refuge from the noisy junkiness of life with Bet. Bet isn't a monster, she's simply the wrong person to be raising the pensive Ally, whose emotions are hidden away, like her mother's. The drama is in our feeling that Lilli must not leave her daughter in the embrace of this raucous old trouper."
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