. . . instead of that boulder near Plymouth, the population of Australia doubtless would top 400 million people Today. How is it that the "Aussies" have been such underachievers when it comes to populating the planet? A GIRL'S OWN STORY provides a lot of answers on this subject. Most of the "romantic overtures" depicted in A GIRL'S OWN STORY are of the sort that will not swell anyone's census report. And many of the few births that occur there result from sibling ribaldry. While it's true that America may harbor a few fringe "religious" cults which do a very poor job of explaining "the birds and the bees," Australia behaves as it its entire population is made up of Shakers and Fundamentalists. (If one cannot Shake our some Fun from Sunday School, why matriculate at all?) A GIRL'S OWN STORY may reek of perversity, but at least there's a glimmer of hope amid the final scene of the lady ice skater. IF the Aussies order themselves a shipment of that hot honeymoon flick from "Tonya H.," maybe someday Australian women can join "Nancy K." in exclaiming, "Why me?!"

"A Girl's Own Story" is an award-winning short film from Australia. This one was made back in 1986, so it had its 30th anniversary last year and it is still somewhat known today because writer and director Jane Campion went on to win an Oscar later in her career. It is a black-and-white movie which is of course a creative decision as basically every movie back in the 1980s had already color. It runs for roughly 25 minutes and is an early, but not very early career effort by Campion. The actors and actresses in here are not really well-known and most of them ended their careers a long time ago, some of them even did not appear in any other film before or after this one. It is basically a look into the lives of three girls and we get to watch their every day struggles with boys, parents and each other of course too. I personally felt they were all interchangeable to be honest and not a single one of them ended up memorable in my opinion unfortunately. The directing by Campion is sometimes pretty decent, but the story is just not on a level where I would give this one a thumbs-up. I also usually like black-and-white films and even from that perspective this ended up extremely forgettable. Watch something else instead unless you are a Campion completionist.

A girl growing up in the era when the Beatles were what girls going through puberty obsessed about, deals with her own boring life in a dull fashion.

When I looked at three of Jane Campion's early short subjects, I discovered they were about trivial and boring issues of the moment: the sort of boredom that inspires us to creativity, insanity, or worst of all, to become award-winning film-makers. We all wish to be beautiful, brilliant, desired, living in a stress-free world that engages us at every moment, but over which we have full control. Alas, none of us get that. Some of them, in our daydreams, cause us to say "What was I thinking?"

I'm afraid this short subject is one of those moments. Not only do I not know what I am thinking of, I'm not sure that I know what Miss Campion was thinking about, except possibly that growing up is hard.