Flirting

Released 1991
Stars Noah Taylor, Thandie Newton, Nicole Kidman
Directed by John Duigan

"Flirting" is one of those rare movies with characters I cared about intensely. I didn't simply observe them on the screen, I got involved in their decisions and hoped they made the right ones. The movie is about two teenagers at private schools in Australia in the 1960s, a white boy and an African girl, who fall in love and do a little growing up at the same time. [It] is not about "movie teenagers," those unhappy creatures whose interests are limited and whose values are piggish. Most movies have no idea how thoughtful and responsible many teenagers are - how seriously they take their lives, how carefully they agonize over personal decisions. Only a few recent films, like "Say Anything" and "Man in the Moon," have given their characters the freedom that "Flirting" grants - for kids to grow up by trying to make the right choices.

So often we settle for noise and movement from the movie screen, for stupid people indulging unworthy fantasies. Only rare movies like "Flirting" remind us that the movies are capable of providing us with the touch of other lives, that when all the conditions are right we can grow a little and learn a little, just like the people on the screen. This movie is joyous, wise and life-affirming, and certainly one of the year's best films.

Summary by Roger Ebert