For a quickie post, I thought I'd put up this absolute classic bit of cult comedy 80s coming of ageness from brilliant cult Aussie director Bruce Beresford (the Barry Mackenzie films, Driving Miss Daisy, etc). Starring Nell Schofield and Jad Capelja.
The plot: Meet Sue, a teenage Australian girl in the late 70s, whose life mainly consists of doing what everyone else does - watch the surfing boys and have sex with the same surfing boys. The girls have to follow lots of strange customs, e.g. do not eat or go to the bathroom when a boy is around. Ugly girls have two choices - being bitches and hate boys, or being generally cheap and looked down upon by everyone. The afternoons are spent on the beaches, in the backseats of car or at home-alone-parties where sex and alcohol are the main ingredients. Parents and teachers are trying to straighten the kids out, but that is not easy.
Schoolgirls, surfing, sex - welcome to Australia's answer to Grange Hill! I've often seen this movie being described as "trash" but I've always found it to be nothing of the kind. A moderately realistic portrayal of adolescent school life, Puberty Blues is a very welcome antidote to the more popular, hazily idealistic, sugar-coated, sell-a-hip-soundtrack, 80s American teen movies such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink.
Puberty Blues
1981
XVID
Approx. 83 mins
