(CTC) 180 minutes
It was almost an hour into Ian Darling’s three-hour The Valley when the penny dropped. From the outset, Kangaroo Valley, the misty, secluded small town which is the subject of this contemplative documentary, felt strangely familiar to me – but not because I’d ever visited in person.
A map of the NSW Southern Highlands confirmed that Kangaroo Valley is less than an hour’s drive from the locations for another recent Australian film, James Robert Woods’ satire The Birthday Trip, where a group of unlovely media professionals gather at a winery for a largely disastrous weekend celebration.
That in turn brings home that Kangaroo Valley, in the midst of what traditionally has been dairy farming country, is now a tourist destination foremost. Darling makes no effort to hide this; indeed, he includes a scene where the locals congratulate themselves on winning a bronze medal in the NSW tourism awards. But the film, an ambitious experiment in its way, feels more like an endless tourism ad than it should.