| Spider and Rose | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Bill Bennett |
| Written by | Bill Bennett |
| Produced by | Lyn McCarthy Graeme Tubbenhauer |
| Starring | Ruth Cracknell Simon Bossell Max Cullen |
| Cinematography | Andrew Lesnie |
| Edited by | Henry Dangar |
| Music by | The Cruel Sea |
Production companies | Dendy Films Australian Film Finance Corp |
Release date |
|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3.38 million[1] |
| Box office | A$856,905 (Australia)[2] |
Spider and Rose is a 1994 Australian film directed by Bill Bennett and starring Ruth Cracknell, Simon Bossell, and Max Cullen. It is about the relationship between an elderly lady and a young ambulance driver.
It won the audience award at the Tromsø International Film Festival in 1995.[3]
An ambulance driver, Spider, 22, has to take a seventy year old woman, Rose on a six hour trip to her family farm. It's his last day at work and he wants to get back for a party he has organised. Spider and Rose clash but over time they form a bond.
Bennett claimed he wanted to make something "a bit more mainstream" than his earlier films. The story was inspired by his grandmother who lost her partner in a road accident. He was also inspired by having been in a several car crash himself in the 1970s which gave him a great appreciation for ambulance drivers.[4][5]
Bennett later said he did not regard the film as a comedy but "a drama that would have some funny bits in it... Even now I don't see the film as a comedy. I regard it as quite a serious treatise on the way we treat the aged."[6]
Bennett estimated it took four years from writing the first treatment through to the completion of the film.[6]
The movie was entirely funded by the AFFC. However it did not want to cast Ruth Cracknell or Simon Bossell. "Ruth Cracknell has yet to deliver a credible screen performance and Simon Bossell (Joh’s Jury) is highly inexperienced,” wrote FFC executive Catriona Hughes to the FFC board.[1] According to Bennett, FFC head John Morris would only finance the movie if Cracknell was not cast, but Bennett insisted; Morris relented but warned it would be a mistake.[1]
Shooting took place near Mudgee.[5]
David Stratton of Variety wrote "On paper, the idea of an odd-couple generation-gap road movie hardly seems promising, so it's a minor miracle that writer/director Bill Bennett has managed to inject life into such familiar material."[7]
The film led to Bennett being hired to make Two If by Sea.[1]
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