The Getting of Wisdom

Drenched in lushly tasteful Victorian production values, this evocation of a warmly sentimental education, set in a Melbourne girls' boarding school, achieves little by way of justifying an adaptation of Ethel Richardson's autobiographical novel of 1910. A perky feminine independence may have proved controversial at the time of its writing, but here emerges as a mere cliché-ridden prelude to an unseen but inevitable brilliant career. Barry Humphries plays straight as a cleric, when a little of his invigorating vulgarity might have pepped the proceedings up considerably, while Beresford's display of versatility only points up his comparative strengths in the almost all-male worlds of The Club and The Money Movers.