The great Ruth Cracknell deserves better than this sorry, dispiriting mess.Based on a real "street celebrity" who recited Shakespeare on corners for a living, "Lillian's Story" has the structure of "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" or an old Hammer horror exploitation epic. Only it's given solemn art-film treatment and it pretends to be a serious examination of age, abuse, and mental illness. Lillian (Cracknell) was committed to an asylum for 40 years by her brute of a father (Barry Otto); she's sprung at the beginning of the film (why now?) by her squishy weakling of a brother (Otto again) and her aunt, and she moves into a seedy room in a red-light district, where she wanders the streets, disoriented and lonely, trying to make connections with the prostitutes and cab drivers, and flashing back to her horrific past (the younger Lillian is played by Toni Collette). The film is one of the worst-shot imaginable, with poor sound recording and ugly color (which shifts to a hideous decayed-lemon tone for the flashbacks). Even worse, each shot is so lingering and so weighted that the film end up as brutal to Cracknell and Collette as their hideous father was. We start to feel like voyeurs intruding on heavily-aestheticized horrors that don't make much sense. None of the guilty secrets revealed are terribly startling; they just feel lurid for luridness's sake, piled on in hopes of a Shocking, Overpowering Statement. The only respites are Cracknell's Shakespearean recitations; they point up the gap between Lillian's dreams and her sordid joke of a real life in a way the rest of the movie can't live up to.

I don't agree with the other persons post, he/she is entitled to their opinion but i fell in love with this film. I adore Australian cinema and have always sort out the golden gems through the years since i was a teenager. This film came out at a time when i needed it! Lilian as the older woman portrayed struggles to cope with being out of hospital after a long period. Suffering from mental illness myself i identified with the feelings of isolation and depression portrayed. The flashbacks worked for me as i could connect with her as to why she may have ended up so scared and alone. I recommend this film if u want to see Toni Collettes earlier work and it is one of Ruth Cracknells final films and the haunting lines she utters still ring now! Not a masterpiece but a fine Australian production.

While I haven't read the novel (which by all accounts is quite good), there is little good to be said of this film. I'm not sure if it was the incoherent flash backs, or the real "Aussie" acting, that most had me reaching for the remote control.So, unless you are a big Ruth Cracknell fan and can stand the tedium this film has to offer, it is, unfortunately, best forgotten.

Kate Grenville's novel Lilian's Story is an Australian masterpiece. The film had the potential to be brilliant, with the talents of Ruth Cracknell and Barry Otto, but instead of portraying the story of Lilian's life, an overly pretentious director turned a potential masterpiece into a vague montage-like kaleidoscope of confusing images that rendered the whole story incoherent. I was deeply disappointed, and refused to waste any more of my life watching this rubbish after it failed to deliver anything resembling the book (except one image, that of Lilian's mother timing the ferries)half an hour into the film. Incidentally, the character of Lillian is meant to be really plump as a child and later as a woman.......if the main character doesn't even resemble a novel's description, what chance does the film have? You might just as well cast Tori Spelling to play the Queen Mother...or even worse, Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly :)