A hauntingly beautiful Australian film about the power of belief, and of the love between siblings. Rex Williamson (Vince Colosimo) is an opal miner prospecting in the outback town of Cooper Pedy. When his daughter Kellyanne's (Sapphire Boyce) imaginary friends go missing after a visit to the family's mine claim, he searches for them, and gets accused of attempted theft from a neighbouring claim in the process. Faced with his father being charged with attempting to steal from someone else's claim, and the family being shunned by the community as a result, as well as his young sister becoming ill through grief for her imaginary friends, Rex's son Ashmol (Christian Byers) sets out to put things right. This review really doesn't do justice to this heart warming and unusual tale. This is an Australian co-production with the BBC, so watch out for some familiar faces in atypical roles.

Screened on DVD June 8, 2008It's a warm holiday season in the South Australia mining town of Coober Pedy, and for the Williamson family, festivities are juggled around nine-year-old Kellyanne's devotion to her invisible playmates, Pobby and Dingan, and her dad, Rex's, single-minded pursuit of the perfect opal.The hypnotic gems possess a dangerous allure, as the girl's brother, Ashmol, says in his framing narration to "Opal Dream." Everybody comes to the place to dream -- presumably about a better life somewhere -- as they dig for opals. The more you dream, the deeper you want to dig, but if you dig too deep, you might never get out -- never wake up, he says.For the Williamsons, the town offers dreams and not much else. Rex hopes to strike it rich for his wife, Annie, and their kids. But after a year in town, they don't have much. Rex needs a bit of luck at the races to afford the kids' Christmas presents.Moving to Coober Pedy has taken the hardest toll on Kellyanne, for whom Pobby and Dingan are two very real people, and she shares with everyone her enthusiasm for her friends' artistic, gentle, natures. "They're pacifists," she explains.Her teacher says Kellyanne has a vivid imagination but she's a dreamer who doesn't have many friends -- "she doesn't find people very easy." When Rex complains about Pobby and Dingan, Annie points out that they're as real as opals are to him.Rex has his share of more tangible problems. He has relocated after an apparently minor brush with the law, and he finds himself in a community of narrow-minded ruffians who don't coddle to "ratters" -- blokes that come around at night and noodle around your claim for highly prized colored opals.Adapted from a Ben Rice novel, "Pobby and Dingan," the movie "Opal Dream" is the story of Rex's reconciliation with his new town and his growing family as two crises unfold.It all starts off innocently. In a clumsy but well-meaning attempt to wean his daughter off Pobby and Dingan, Rex offers to take the amorphous pair along to the mines with him and Ashmol while she and Mom go to a holiday party. Kellyanne agrees, but when he comes home without her unseen sidekicks, Kellyanne talks him into going back to look for them. When he does, the bloke at a nearby mine discovers Rex on his claim and calls the cops.Rex is soon headed to a hearing to face mining violation charges. Worse, the whole town turns on the family: Annie loses her job at a grocery store and, when Ashmol goes for a bike ride, he finds a rat swinging from the handlebars left by a gang of jeering kids. Again, Kellyanne gets the worst of it -- without Pobby and Dingan around, she falls ill and, to the bafflement of her doctors, steadily deteriorates.The way the reconciliation is achieved carries the story satisfactorily through Act III. But the climax and resolution are squeezed together so tightly that the outcome for all the characters can only be described as ambiguous, especially for poor Kellyanne, whose actions were only the metaphor for her family's isolation.Director Peter Cattaneo's production has an outstanding cast throughout, particularly the Williamson clan. Production values are excellent. Newcomer Sapphire Boyce is a strikingly beautiful child.

The Australian film industry has over the last few decades produced a number of haunting, poetic films, quite different from the standard Hollywood output. Examples include "Walkabout", "Picnic at Hanging Rock", the lesser-known but excellent "Celia" and the more recent "Ten Canoes". "Opal Dream" is another in this tradition; as in "Celia" the main character is a nine-year-old girl.The film is set in the opal mining town of Coober Pedy, here disguised under the fictitious name of Lightning Ridge, and centres on the family of opal miner Rex Williamson. Some on this board have labelled the family "dysfunctional", but this does not seem an accurate description. Rex and his wife Annie are loving and affectionate parents to their children Ashmol and Kellyanne, and Ashmol seems a normal, likable eleven-year-old lad. The problem lies with his younger sister Kellyanne, a shy, withdrawn child who finds it difficult to make friends. To compensate for her lack of playmates she has invented two imaginary friends, Pobby (male) and Dingan (female).Many children go through a phase of having an imaginary friend- I remember my younger sister inventing a boy called John Ted- but Kellyanne's case is rather different. Even at the age of five or six my sister was well aware in her heart of hearts that John Ted was a fantasy rather than a real person, and by the time she was nine he had long been forgotten. Kellyanne, however, has quite convinced herself that Pobby and Dingan are real, and has retained her belief in the reality of their existence long after most children have waved their imaginary friends goodbye.Rex and Annie are concerned about their daughter's fantasies, but pretend to believe in the existence of Pobby and Dingan to humour her, and one day Rex pretends to take them to his opal diggings. When he returns, however, Kellyanne becomes convinced that he has left them behind and insists that he take her back to look for them. Rex does so, but while looking for the imaginary pair he inadvertently strays onto another miner's claim, which leads to him being arrested by the police and charged with "ratting" (illegal mining). As ratting is regarded as the most heinous sin an opal miner can commit, this leads to Rex and his family being ostracised by their neighbours. Kellyanne falls ill, partly because of stress caused by the family's situation and partly because of grief over the loss of her friends.There are parallels between Kellyanne's situation and that of her parents and the wider community of Lightning Ridge. She is living in a world of make-believe and so, in a sense, are they. The opal miners are not employed by a big mining corporation, but are self-employed prospectors. Each miner has his own jealously guarded individual claim, which explains why "ratters" are regarded with such contempt. They have been lured to the town by dreams of wealth, but in most cases these prove to be as illusory as Pobby and Dingan. (Hence the title "Opal Dream"). Until about a year previously, Rex and Annie ran a pub in Melbourne, but abandoned that life to try their luck in the opal fields. The fact that the Williamsons are outsiders makes many of their neighbours ill-disposed to them even before the "ratting" allegations, and there is a suggestion that Kellyanne's emotional problems may be connected to her sudden uprooting from one environment to another.I did not like the ending, which I felt amounted to a retreat into tear-jerking sentimentality and avoided, rather than resolving, the tensions and conflicts inherent in the plot. That, however, would be my only complaint. The adults all play their parts well, and the two child actors, Christian Byers and Sapphire Boyce, were excellent. Sapphire (interesting that the leading actress in a film about jewel mining should herself be named after a jewel) deserves a special mention. Most excellent performances from child actors come in films where they are required to play lively, outgoing youngsters- a good recent example is Anna Sophia Robb's performance in "Bridge to Terabithia", a film I did not otherwise much care for. To have played an introverted, withdrawn child like Kellyanne must have been more difficult. The film's haunting atmosphere is also heightened by the photography of the South Australian desert landscapes, made to seem even more barren and otherworldly by the slagheaps from the mineral workings. "Opal Dream" is very enjoyable as a sensitive and poetic exploration of a difficult childhood. 7/10

I saw this movie at the 2006 International Film Festival of Rotterdam.Heartwarming family movie about imaginary friends.The 9 year old daughter of a family in an opal mining town enjoys company of two imaginary friends. She becomes ill after something happens to them. The father is suspected of theft, making his household outcasts in the rough Australian mining community. The older brother has always felt embarrassed of his sister's behavior, but decides to help her anyway.Movie manages to make the audience both laugh and care about its subject "imaginary friends". Very entertaining, Excellent performances from the child actors. Recommended.9/10Credits Trivia: The story is based on the book "Pobby and Dingan" (2000) by UK-based author Ben Rice. Pobby and Dingan are the names of the imaginary friends. I just happened to run into this little 100 page book a week after seeing the movie.