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The National Film Board of Canada has been responsible for some of the best shorts made anywhere since the war. Now, with this film, they are making a triumphant entry into the feature film field. Directed by Don Owen, whose short Runner was shown at an earlier Melbourne Festival, this feature registers the nuances of a rebellion against the complacent affluence that a young teenage couple sees around them in Toronto.
The film is a sensitively detailed penetration into the mood of youth; it takes a boy, whom society would label a delinquent, falling into crime because of a refusal of one generation to compromise with the other. It is a simply told story, but a good deal of humour takes the edge off a sombre subject. Although a fiction film with invented plot and characters, much of the dialogue has the appearance of being improvised (and, in fact, often was) and the documentary technique is persuasively handled. Peter Kastner and Julie Biggs are naturally charming as the two youngsters.