The Umbrella Woman

Hot thighs under the cold tap, blood-kin and wife-sharing in the shack - no, not Erskine Caldwell, but New South Wales in the late '30s. Marge (Ward) tries hard to be a pillar of the community, to live down her infamous mother's horizontal career, and marries the dependable Sonny (Brown). Her life seems humdrum, however, and when Sonny's weak younger brother Sugar (Vidler) proposes sex, she lets her husband decide with the comment that one man is much like another. Sugar proves even less exciting than Sonny, and boasts of his conquest in town, which sets tongues wagging. Becoming obsessed with the new bartender at the hotel (Neill), an unscrupulous womaniser, Marge lays embarrassing siege to him... This could easily have been one of those old devil-in-the-flesh absurdities, but the plot is full of surprises, with Marge's hunger for a grand passion resulting in humiliation all round and a sadly chastening ending. Within its small compass, a moving experience.