What do Australians think of this movie?

I think this movie is a mess.

Why would they feel anything?

It's a fictionalized version of Norman Lindsey but if you read factual accounts about his life some of his pictures were burned by Americans because they saw them as pornography when they were seized on a train in America the artist had tried to save some of his artwork from being destroyed by the Germans during WWII by sending them to America.

The way the Australians were behaving toward Lindsey in this film is similar to the way some of his artwork was treated by the British when he had his exhibition in Leicester in the 1920s. The British didn't behave any differently toward the Australians or even Americans in the U.S..

I live in the U.S., UK and Australia for business but I can't speak for all Americans anymore than I can speak for all men or for everyone, but Norman Lindsey is a one the most famous artist in Australia, they used his former home which is now a museum to film the movie.

It's not a real biography and I think of the film as more of a comedy., I've never heard anyone in Australia say anything bad about the film and the comments from people I know who have seen are the same as the varied opinions on this site, and they had nothing to do with how people are portrayed in the film.

I don't get upset when I see Americans portrayed in films made in other countries but that's just me.

I'm from the and in my travels, I've been to some small towns in the U.S. and got the creeps, I've also gotten the creeps in other small towns I've visited on the planet some small towns don't like strangers but most of them make you feel very comfortable.

This is an article from a London newspaper about the Lindsey art exhibition in London during the period in which the film is set - http://bit.ly/WzaZOJ

Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good.

I am Australian. I first saw this movie in 1993 and hated it but I watched it again and liked it. To me, it is a film about women and their sexuality.
The scenes of the pub were probably quite realistic for the time but I don't think the men in the pub were violent, just suspicious of new people.
The animals turning up everywhere (the koala, lizard etc) were exagerrated but I think this was deliberate, expressing this wild place which Estella is both fascinated and afraid of.

It's not an outback town - which is one of the flaws with the movie.

The village of Springwood is real. It is part of the Blue Mountains, which is a fairly genteel, slightly bohemian place. It is essentially an outer suburb of Sydney, about an hour away from the city centre by train. It's basically always been a commuter suburb, and I don't think there have ever been sheep farms there as depicted in the movie. The surrounding area is native forest, but the scenes of valleys and cliffs are from the upper mountains where the views are more majestic. The upper mountains has some resort towns, with hotels such as the Hotel-Majestic operating in this era.

The idea of the hardbitten locals in the pub is a cliché of Australian movies (see Crocodile Dundee) and quite out of place here.

I've never had any interest in watching it properly.