La Spagnola

An oddball heightened realist comedy, La Spagnola is set in the pastel '60s and centres on volatile Spanish immigrant Lola, her inconstant Italian husband and their late-teenage daughter living in industrial New South Wales. Daughter Lucia keeps family photographs lightly buried in the garden, next to her pigeon loft; perhaps she senses her daddy, whom she adores, is about to leave home with the family savings and mum will soon bake the pigeons in a pie. Lusciously shot by Steve Arnold, this is a piece of social observation disguised as farce, given a wash of post-Campion Australian surrealism. As sexually rumbustious ethnic drama, it gallops through the clichés, but doesn't run deep.