Backbencher

This film begins when the Japanese start invading in Southeast Asia. Jean Pagent and a group of women were forced to walk to a prison camp. After much toil and losing half of the women, they stumble on a Japanese prisoner of war Joe Harman. Joe ends up getting tortured for stealing supplies for the women. Jean thinks he dies, and after the war she goes back to England. After coming into a large inheritance, she travels back to Southeast Asia and finds out that Joe is alive. Joe meanwhile finds out that Jean is not married (he assumed all the women prisoners were wives) and runs off to England to try and meet up with her. Eventually they meet up in Australia, and get engaged. Jean plans to bring some economic growth to the town close to Joe’s station. After a few incidents, such as riding 40 miles to get help and telling off the bank manager, Jean and Joe get married and presumably live happily ever after.
This is a very slow moving film. I found myself nearly driven crazy when Joe is in England and Jean is in Australia searching for each other. The finally did meet up with each other, which at that time I had to cheer “about time”. I don’t know if all Australian films are this slow, but this one is. The English people in this film seem to think that Australians are a distrustful, disruptive kind of people. This belief is proven wrong as the setting of the film moves to Australia. The nature of the small towns in the film seems to me to be close to the small towns we have in North Dakota. Everybody knows everybody, and secrets cannot be kept. Good stories pass around the towns too, such as Jean’s ride. The outback culture presented in the film seems to be pretty close to the culture experienced in many small towns today.