Tony Ayres' debut feature film "Walking on Water is an intensely rich drama starring Vince Colosimo and Maria Theodorakis.
Charlie (Vince Colosimo) and Anna (Maria Theadorakis) are Gavin's (David Bonney) two best friends. They made a pact to assist Gavin to die when the time came. Now it's that time, and despite a massive overdose of morphine, Gavin remains alive. This is hardly the dignified death they had all planned...
And it's just the beginning for Charles and Anna as they go on an emotional rollercoaster through the highs and lows of the grief experience. With the arrival of gavin's family, initial pain is submerged by practicalities. Anna, a born organiser, takes over, planning the funeral and wake which both she and Gavin had envisaged. This leaves his mother, Margaret (Judi Farr) on the sideline, offering and needing to help.
Charlie, having spent 18 months looking after Gavin, is equally redundant. Relegated to playing Anna's assistant, he becomes increasingly alienated both by Anna and his own feelings of guilt for his part in Gavin's death. Charlie turns to his boyfriend Frank (Nicholas Bishop) for support, but Frank is not ready for this kind of responsibility. Charlie fumbles around for answers but instead finds solace in a morphine bottle.
Simon (Nathaniel Dean), Gavin's younger brother, has been rocked to his very core bu his brother's death. Married to Kate (Anna Lisae Phillips) and with a young child, he is confronted with mortality for the first time. He finds himself gravitating towards Anna, who in turn see Simon as a way of clinging onto the love she felt for Gavin.
From illicit affairs and left over morphine to devastating accusations and unwitting betrayals, Gavin's friends and family are forced to face the true meaning of friendship, loyalty and love.
At times hypnotically intense, at other times surprisingly funny, 'Walking on Water' is a compassionate and optimistic film about the way that grief can bring out the best and worst in human nature.
Review
Friends and family gather around the death bed of Gavin, where they assist in the dying man's suicide. But though Gavin's pain has been laid to rest, the grief felt by everyone there has only begun, and Walking on Water compassionately follows the attempts of Gavin's closest friends Anna (Maria Theodorakis) and Charlie (Vince Colosimo) to recover from their loss. This beautiful Australian movie carefully observes the subtle power struggles between friends and family as they try, with a kind of mournful jealousy, to claim the memory of the deceased for their own. All the characters are superbly written and made vivid by the excellent ensemble. Despite the heavy subject matter and its terrible title, Walking on Water is delicate, down-to-earth, shot through with humor (sometimes macabre, sometimes gentle), and completely absorbing. --Bret Fetzer
