Love in Limbo

Perth, 1957: a bespectacled adolescent (Young) is expelled from school for marketing his highly detailed drawings of naked women among his innocent classmates, whereupon he's parcelled off into a job in his uncle's clothing firm, and real life begins. Taken under the wing of the office rake (Adams), the lad is introduced to drink, women, cigarettes, etc, but his reactions are complicated when his widowed mum and his mentor begin to take an interest in each other. Assembling the story in a mosaic of kitsch furnishings and day-glo colours, Elfick finds both humour and pathos in the material, piecing events together with a rollercoaster rhythm. Most enjoyable.