Celine O'Leary Movies
- 2000
A teenaged lad tries to come to terms with the fact that he is "Selkie" -- a seal-human hybrid -- in this Australian family movie. Jamie Duncan (Shimon Moore) moves with his marine-scientist mother Iona (Celine O'Leary) to Jackson Island. Iona heads up a research center on the island, and Jamie soon encounters her dour assistant (Edmund Pegge) and an evil tuna fisherman (Michael Habib). En route to the research center, Jamie hits it off with Samantha (Chelsea Bruland). Their budding puppy love is thrown for a loop when Jamie jumps into the ocean to save Samantha -- and turns into a seal. After his grandfather explains his unusual lineage, Jamie resolves to find the secret potion that will make him all human. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bryan Marshall
Dutch-Australian director Rolf de Heer's second film is a vision of a quickly dissolving marriage as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old child. Chloe Ferguson (de Heer's real-life daughter) stars as a nameless little girl who withdraws completely into herself and refuses to speak as the level of animosity between her mother (Celine O'Leary) and father (Paul Blackwell) moves them inexorably closer to divorce. The girl's voice is heard, however, as narration, in which she describes her increasing alienation from the squabbling adults who are becoming more self absorbed, and more childish, than their child. Her only refuge is her blue-walled room, a fantasyland of goldfish and Barbie dolls that don't bicker, where she can remember happier days when she as three, or dream of a pet dog and a house in the country. The theme of an immature soul trapped by family within the confines of a home thematically mirrored de Heer's more controversial previous film Bad Boy Bubby (1993), which did not find North American distribution. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Celine O'Leary, Paul Blackwell, (more)
