My First Wife

John (Hargreaves) introduces classical music over the late-night Melbourne air waves to pay his way as a composer. His wife Helen (Hughes) meanwhile indulges in some close harmony with a fellow choir member. One long painful night she comes clean about her adultery, and decides to leave John, taking their daughter with her. But John cannot cope with the separation. Standard soap on paper, but Cox fills the screen with luminous images of desires and anguish, and encourages his actors to portray emotional states of an almost embarrassing intensity. Rarely has the naked human body seemed so vulnerable, so raw; rarely has a simple shot - a girl and a dog - combined with a phrase of music seemed so potent. With its teasing, semi-autobiographical title, this is not always a comfortable film, but its compassion, wit and vigour are undoubtedly the real thing.