Hating Alison Ashley Film Study Guide
STUDY GUIDE Censorship rating CHRISTINE EVELY STUDY GUIDE Mature themes, low level coarse language. FROM BOOK TO FILM: HATING ALISON ASHLEY.
Not that it matters. The film of Hating Alison Ashley, Robin Klein's much-read children's novel, has little to do with the real world. It's set in Ockerdom, a place where we patriotic filmgoers have spent a lot of time lately, thanks to the run of comedies which have been trying, with raucous relentlessness, to make themselves loveable in the happy-go-lucky manner of The Castle. Hating Alison Ashley is not really Alison's story. As Klein's many fans know, its narrator is Alison's classmate, Erica Yurken (Saskia Burmeister), a talented self-dramatist, who fancies she's been stranded in the wrong life. Her refined sensibilities, she thinks, are more suited to some ivy-covered temple of learning than scungy, working-class Barringa East, where she's been dumped among the delinquents of 9C.
Whenever she can, she escapes to the sick bay, where her impressive list of imaginary ailments has gained her a reputation as a creative hypochondriac. And life at home is no better. Although her sweet-natured mum (Tracy Mann) does her best, Erica can't forgive her for taking up with Lennie (Richard Carter), a truck driver she met at Parents Without Partners, or for giving her such unbearable siblings.
Adapting a well-loved book is a tricky business. Watching this one, you think inevitably of Kate Woods's beguiling film of Melina Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi. Admittedly, Marchetta's is a more sophisticated story about an older age group, but the biggest difference between the films lies in their method of construction. Marchetta wrote the Alibrandi script herself, radically altering her book's architecture while leaving its tone intact. But Ashley director Geoff Bennett and writer Christine Madafferi have contented themselves with a painting-and-decorating job. They use design and costumes to flesh out the characters, which means that Erika and her 9C classmates present a full catalogue of teen fashions, while the Yurkens live in a riot of leopard-print fabric and fluoro-coloured plastic. Try searching for a sign of emotional engagement and you're soon lost in the scenery.
I had trouble, too, with the script's constant stream of voice-over narration. I think it's being employed as a sort of back-to-base security system to make Klein fans feel as if they're still in touch with the novel, but such verbosity is dangerous coming from someone as self-absorbed as Erica.
On the page, she's taking you into her confidence. On screen, she's nagging you to the point of numbness. Relieved of the obligation to tell you what you're looking at, Burmeister could be very funny. It's impossible to tell since she has nobody to play off. Beatific Alison and bristling Erica have the makings of the quintessential odd couple, but their friendship never fires because they scarcely connect. Even when we get to the heart of Alison's problems - an absent father and an indifferent mother - Goodrem seems to be floating above the action, possibly because the script has no way of flagging her down to meet its requirements. Much of the story takes place at school camp, where 9C follows the ritual of every school camp movie and stages a show for visiting parents.
Hating Alison Ashley Film Study Guide
Kittson's commanding but basically benign Miss Belmont shines here as the mechanics of the plot creak under the pressure of reaching a denouement that makes sense; Craig McLachlan pulls off some neat pratfalls as the bumbling PT teacher, Mr Kennard ('I put the fizz into phys ed'), and I liked Alexander Cappelli as Erica's nemesis, Barry Hollis, the evil genius of 9C. There is, too, one Castle-like moment when Richard Carter's Lennie finally succeeds in getting through to Erica with the story's main theme - that appearances aren't everything. But a lot of wasted opportunities have to be endured before you get to it.
Hating Alison Ashley cover Hating Alison Ashley is a 1984. (Puffin Books, London and Melbourne, ) Written by and 's author. Written as a preteen comedy, the book has a strong moral undercurrent about the pursuit of happiness and perfection, the pressures of growing up and the power of friendship.
It portrays the agonies of school-girl rivalries, constant embarrassment by family, and painful and often brutally funny awkwardness and insecurity. One of Klein's most popular preteen novels, it has since become a standard English text for school students across Australia. The book was nominated for 8 Australian literature awards and won the Young Australian Best Book Award (YABBA) in 1987 and the Kids Own Australian Literature Award (KOALA) in 2013. It has since become a play, adapted by Richard Tulloch and directed by, and a film, directed by with in the title role. Plot Erica 'Yuk' Yurken is an arrogant girl who believes herself superior to everyone in Barringa East, a council town that is dilapidated and mostly vandalised.
She believes that she belongs in a more luxurious place and that she is destined to be a famous theatrical actress. Erica attends Barringa East primary where she is entering the 6th grade at the beginning of the novel, and she is distant towards the other students as she feels her intellect is far higher than theirs. Erica often creates highly exaggerated stories about herself to impress her classmates and hide the true lack of class in her family and is a hypochondriac, constantly visiting the School sickbay for made up ailments. While many of the teachers at Barringa East primary are incompetent, her grade 6 teacher Miss Belmont is intelligent and disciplinary, and Erica thrives under her control. She outshines her classmates by putting effort in her projects, and just as her ego begins to bloom, a section of one of the upper class estates surrounding Barringa East is reclassified as part of their suburb, and due to the a new student, Alison Ashley, is placed in Erica's class. Alison Ashley is a beautiful, rich, neat and intelligent girl, traits that Erica instantly grows envious of. She is seated beside Erica in class and though at first Erica wants to impress Alison in the hopes that she will befriend Erica, her jealousy of the girl grows stronger throughout the day, until she finally pushes Alison away.
Over the next few days, Alison's organisation and talent angers Erica until finally she snaps, offending Alison and calling her a snob. On many occasions, Alison appears to want to instigate a friendship, though Erica stubbornly turns her away out of spite and envy. Alison visits Erica's house, and after Erica's family humiliates her several times she accuses Alison of being judgmental and nosy. Shortly after, Erica finds Alison's belongings mixed up with hers and begrudgingly returns them to her, envious of Alison's luxurious house and clean living which is the polar opposite of her own. Though Alison attempts to be friendly, Erica unintentionally wakes up Alison's mother who has a demanding late-night job, and after she furiously asks Alison who is with her, Alison quickly says 'No one,' something Erica views as the ultimate indignity and causes her to once again refuse to speak to Alison. The two girls are later placed in a cabin and group together on the annual Grade Six camp. Erica is once again outdone and thus infuriated by Alison Ashley, particularly in the camp play, where she is horrified to discover that she, having always dreamed of being an actress, suffers from stage fright while Alison displays skill as an actress and is cast in the lead role.
On performance she can not bear to watch Alison take the spotlight and flees to her cabin, where she is touched to find that Alison has compiled the script that Erica wrote for the play into a book as a gesture of friendship. Erica also discovers that although Alison was in the lead role, her mother did not bother to attend the camp performance night as she cared little about her daughter, revealing to Erica that Alison was genuinely envious of her chaotic but warm family life and making Erica reconsider her disdain for her family. Erica and Alison reconcile and become friends. External links.