Formally audacious and driven by a performance of astonishing poise by its 16-year-old star, this provocative low-budget Australian indie doesn't quite carry off its risky ambitions - it's too long by 20 minutes or so, and it chases some narrative wild geese.
Its most glaring error is to step outside the framing device it has established: it purports to track a year in the life of Adelaide teenager Billie (Cobham-Hervey) as she comes to terms with her mother Jane's (Herbert-Jane) decision to start living as a man ("I get it, Mum," she says. "It's okay", but as the story unfolds, she finds it's not that simple). Yet, jarringly, several plot developments occur that Billie could not have known about.
The title refers to form as well as content: the film was shot chronologically according to the timetable it records and although the writers, Matthew Cormack and director Hyde, had an overall plan, the script was written and delivered to the actors piecemeal.
Whether that has more than novelty value is a moot point although it does allow Billie to change, Boyhood-style, as times passes and she begins to explore her own sexuality. But the film deploys a variety of approaches, notably Billie's video diary, to document the year in a series of snippets and vignettes.
To say that this makes for a sometimes jerky and fractured narrative is to miss the point. The film skips past some Tuesdays, so it has fewer than 52 scenes, but even so some last only seconds, and some are left unsatisfactorily hanging. Yet it still achieves a remarkable coherence of both story and character.
