Two Friends

Director: Jane Campion
Australia. 1986.
76 minutes. Color.

Cast: Emma Coles, Kris Bidenko and Kris McQuade. Script by Helen Garner.

Two Friends, the first feature film by Academy Award® winner Jane Campion (Sweetie, An Angel at My Table and The Piano). When Two Friends was shown at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival along with her three shorts, the film world heralded the brave new feminist voice of the extraordinary New Zealand director.

Two Friends was written by renowned Australian novelist Helen Garner and the film’s screenplay is articulate, assured and enthralling. The film begins in the present, when teenage girlfriends, Louise and Kelly, once inseparable, have already grown apart. Louise is in high school, gets good grades, and has a typical love-hate relationship with her divorced mother. Kelly, in bleached hair and punk gear, lives with friends at the beach and is experimenting with drugs and casual relationships. Two Friends then moves backwards in time over the past year in the girls’ friendship. In five episodes, the film reveals the subtle changes that sent the two on their different paths. With the humor, fierce honesty and passionate sense of humanity that are the hallmarks of Campion’s best work, she tells a story of missed opportunities and minor traumas that take on profound new meaning with the passage of time.

Bonus Features

Stills Gallery; lost Campion short: Mishaps of Seduction and Conquest.

Reviews

"A gem- extraordinary perception and compassion." - Los Angeles Times

“Two Friends is a painfully honest, cannily structured and genuinely moving drama ... With its pin-point accuracy down to the smallest detail of everyday behavior of kids and adults alike, this is a film which is far more important than its modest format would suggest. It is, ultimately, a heartbreaking experience ... Devastating.” — David Stratton, Variety