Flirting (1991)

[8]

Writer/director John Duigan (The Year My Voice Broke, Lawn Dogs) takes an earnest and engaging stab at the ‘boy meets girl and falls in love’ narrative with Flirting. Noah Taylor stars as an ostracized Australian boarding school student in the 1950s who becomes infatuated with a new Ugandan student (Thandie Newton) from a nearby girls’ school. As the two avoid their headmasters for clandestine rendezvous and slowly earn the respect of their alpha-peers, global politics threaten to separate the couple. When Newton’s family back home are endangered by political uprising, Newton’s character decides to leave — but not without first risking a memorable farewell night with Taylor, an event that could get him expelled.

Flirting manages to be unabashedly romantic without anyone ever having to say, “I love you.” Duigan’s understated, often dryly comic screenplay avoids the rigmarole that mars so many romance flicks. Taylor and Newton, who have great chemistry together, are freed from formula — allowed to live and breathe ‘in the moment’. Newton (Crash, W., TV’s Westworld), in her screen debut, exudes an unforgettable, effortless sensuality. The most notable supporting player is future superstar Nicole Kidman, one of those alpha-peers who actually becomes a trusted friend to Newton’s character. Kidman has one of the film’s best scenes, one in which she tells Newton about the time she let a boy touch her all over, without removing any clothing, until she felt “all shivery delicious.”

I’m a believer in something Willa Cather once wrote. She said: “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” Flirting takes us down a well-traveled path, but somehow manages to make us look at young love for the first time again.