My Brilliant Career - Criterion Collection (Blu-Ray)

My Brilliant Career - Criterion Collection (Blu-Ray)For her award winning breakthrough film, director Gillian Armstrong drew on teenage author Miles Franklins novel, a celebrated turn of the twentieth century Australian coming of age story, to brashly upend the conventions of period romance. Headstrong young Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis, in a star making performance), bemoans her stifling life in the backcountry, where her writerly ambitions receive little encouragement, and craves independence above all

For her award-winning breakthrough film, director Gillian Armstrong drew on teenage author Miles Franklin’s novel, a celebrated turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australian coming-of-age story, to brashly upend the conventions of period romance. Headstrong young Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis, in a star-making performance), bemoans her stifling life in the backcountry, where her writerly ambitions receive little encouragement, and craves independence above all else. When a handsome landowner (Sam Neill), disarmed by her unruly charms, begins to court her, Sybylla must decide whether she can reconcile the prospect of marriage with the illustrious life’s work she has imagined for herself. Suffused with generous humor and a youthful appetite for experience, My Brilliant Career is a luminous portrait of an ardently free spirit.

Region B Blu-ray : Australian compatible

• New 2K digital restoration, approved by director Gillian Armstrong, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2009 featuring Armstrong
• New interview with Armstrong
• Interview from 1980 with actor Judy Davis
• New interview with production designer Luciana Arrighi
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Carrie Rickey