Ladies in Black

It's a film whose cast is utterly sweet and lovely to look at even if the movie feels incredibly thin.

"Ladies" is let down by a screenplay lacking the sharp wit and emotional depth to bring its characters and themes fully to life.

Ladies in Black isn't really a plot-driven movie, it's more of a mood, it's about inviting you to spend some time in this lovely, quaint world where it's always sunny.

From our vantage point 60 years on, Ladies in Black offers a vision - idealised, but perhaps not wholly false - of a moment when it was possible to welcome newcomers to the country and the unfamiliar ideas they brought with them.

Ladies in Black quietly but effectively points out the seldom-stressed positives of immigration and integration, and thus deserves attention far beyond its own native shores.

Ladies in Black may be seen mistakenly as lightweight or slight; it isn't. It brims with subtext and nuance and at the same time succeeds in being a thoroughly enjoyable entertainment.

Julia Ormond, Angourie Rice, Rachael Taylor and Alison McGirr are the standouts in this gorgeously costumed and life-affirming tale.

Beresford, who directed Driving Miss Daisy, Crimes of the Heart, and Breaker Morant, movies that portrayed eccentrics inhabiting society's borders, neither sentimentalizes these women's struggles nor makes them paragons of identity politics.

Ladies in Black fits the bill, beautifully.

I love this film. I absolutely, unabashedly love it... It's a wonderful, pastoral, poetic, melodramatic and oftentimes very funny and touching portrait of 1959 Sydney.