Showing as part of the London Australian film festival, Rachel Perkins's slow and gloomy movie is a kind of operetta, a semi-sung drama based on a true story.

A little girl runs away from home in the outback and the bigoted father won't let an Aboriginal tracker help find her. This could have made an excellent atmospheric short; but it's been painfully stretched out to count as a feature.

The songs don't make much of an impression and the emphasis is more on lengthy, plodding and familiar-looking shots of the desolate scrub. A disappointment.