How Deep Is The Ocean Review | Road Rash Reviews

4 star innovative and thought provoking indie film.

How Deep Is The Ocean is a 2024 Australian independent film, written and directed by Andrew Walsh who makes his very interesting and bold feature directorial debut.

It is available to watch now on Tubi, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Apple TV and Youtube.

“Welcome to Melbourne…World’s most liveable city. Enjoy.”

As the film opens, we see an anonymous young woman, walking into the sea, fully clothed. But who is she and how did she find herself here?

Eleanor (Olivia Fildes – Sunflower) is a troubled young woman who has just moved from Adelaide to Melbourne to get away from something, we don’t know what. She arrives in Melbourne with just the clothes on her back and a small backpack and finds herself a room in a run down boarding house with washed up stand up comedian Roy (Cris Cochrane – My Cherry Pie, Good Girl Lola). She also meets Matt (Will Weatheritt – The Neon Spectrum), who she beat to the room.

Things get off to a shaky start when Roy barges into her room semi naked and drunk and the next morning he is passed out in the hall, but as time passes they reach a cautious agreement. She is taken with her neighbour Charlie (Adam Rowland – Home and Away (TV Series)), who is a bit of a bad boy and unfortunately also married. She struggles to keep a job, she’s a bit feisty and we follow her progress as she tries to forge out a life for herself here on the streets of this new city.

“So, you’re laughing at me now, but you’re not laughing at my humour. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Although made on a micro budget, How Deep Is The Ocean is a really well made film. We really feel as though we are walking the streets with Eleanor, bouncing from one dead end job to another and negotiating the minefield that is dealing with the men who come into her life in various capacities.

It captures the realities of being a young twenty something woman extremely well and the lack of any script or storyboards lends the whole thing a sense of realism, as well as some quite amusing exchanges. Although some of the actors are better than others, the leads are very strong and deal with the improvisation brilliantly, holding it all together.

If you are looking for action then this isn’t for you, it is instead a surprisingly intimate and well portrayed look at a year in the life of a young woman. Well worth a watch.

“Oh, Mom was kind of out of the picture a while ago. And then Dad, long story short, he’s in jail.”