Walkabout

REVIEW
Agutter is undeniably fetching as the budding young woman who, with her younger brother (John), is suddenly stranded in the wilderness. With a preternatural calm (and still clad in school uniforms), they venture into the Outback searching for civilization but find instead an aboriginal teen (Gulpilil) who's on his "walkabout" -- an initiation ritual involving months of solo survival. With no common language, the threesome begin a trek that slowly breaks down their cultural barriers. Pieced together in Roeg's trademark patchwork of chunks of loose narrative, and with a minimum of dialogue, Walkabout is at first very obtuse, but its attempt to blur the distinctions between the civilized and "primitive" worlds ultimately lacks subtlety; otherwise, maybe it would be seen as a classic.