Original full-length feature
Drama.
Log line
Conservative nineteen thirties, a violent gang rape, the pregnant and intelligent teenage victim is persuaded to marry an unschooled dyslectic teenage boy who has an imaginary girlfriend competing with her. Making the marriage work is up to her alone.
Alternative log line
She’s above average intelligence, loves reading and marries a dyslectic boy with an imaginary, long dead, girlfriend competing in their marriage, divorce is not an option, she
has to make it work.
Talking to Claudine
1 Page Synopsis
Wally, 6, dyslectic with learning disabilities, lonely and friendless makes friends with Claudine, a new girl in class. She is disabled and wearing leg irons. Like Wally, she is shunned and teased not only by Suzie and Kevin but also by all the other children. When Claudine dies, Wally is inconsolable. Then one lonely day during play break, he imagines that she strolls confidently through the playground towards him without her leg irons. In his imaginary world they chat and laugh happily again in class and in the playground, however everybody else sees him as talking to himself. Wally’s family moves to a farm and he is taken out of school after less than a year. His friendship with imaginary Claudine continues.
Move on twelve years and teenager Suzie is hopelessly in love with Kevin and day dreams of being his wife and mother of his children. She is gang raped, pregnant and no longer a desirable marriage prospect, Kevin dumps her. Her mother persuades her to marry Wally. She refuses, believing that Kevin will rush to her rescue and they will get married.
Unable to understand and cope with his emerging sexuality, Wally starts to show an “unhealthy” interest in the Latino girls working on the farm. His parents are desperate to have him safely married, but who will have him?
Suzie sees Kevin being cozy with another girl and agrees to marry Wally. She soon discovers that there are three in her marriage, her rival is her new husband’s phantom childhood girlfriend, Claudine whom he regularly seems to see and talks to when he thinks nobody is watching. She miscarries and returns to her childhood home. She is adamant not to go back to Wally. The body of a man is discovered in the bush where Suzie was raped and three men are arrested, one turns state witness. During cross examination he tells police that his mates killed the man because he was present when they raped a young girl and they feared he would talk. Suzie is called to identify them and to testify at their trial. Desperate to escape facing her rapists and the people attending the trial, she flees back to Wally.
She realizes that the only way to deal with the Claudine issue is to acknowledge her existence and also pretends to talk to her as if she is real, she even goes to the lengths of setting a place for her at the dinner table and dishing up a third plate. When Tommy, Wally’s beloved dog, suddenly dies he is distraught, she touches him for the first time when she comforts him by putting her arms around him, but it goes no further. Over time she grows fond of the gentle Wally. When their marriage is consummated at last Claudine fades out of their lives and they have a boy and a girl together.
Then she runs into Kevin again, he is free and delighted to have found her. She discovers that she loves Wally and their two children more than she has ever loved anybody else before.
