General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Flirting (1991 film)

Flirting is a 1991 Australian coming-of-age comedy-drama written and directed by John Duigan, and the sequel to his 1987 film The Year My Voice Broke. Set in 1965 at two single-sex boarding schools separated by a lake, it follows the schoolboy Danny Embling (Noah Taylor) and his romance with Thandiwe Adjewa (Thandie Newton), a Ugandan girl facing racism at the nearby girls' school. Produced by Kennedy Miller, it won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film for 1990 and gave early screen roles to Thandie Newton, Nicole Kidman, and Naomi Watts.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	John Duigan, who wrote the script about seven years before The Year My Voice Broke³
Production and release	Produced in 1990 by Kennedy Miller; Australian release 21 March 1991; running time 99 minutes⁴
Producers	Terry Hayes, George Miller, and Doug Mitchell²
Principal cast	Noah Taylor (Danny Embling), Thandie Newton (Thandiwe Adjewa), Nicole Kidman (Nicola Radcliffe), Naomi Watts (Janet Odgers)²
AFI Awards (1990)	Wins for Best Film, Best Achievement in Editing (Robert Gibson), and Best Achievement in Production Design (Roger Ford); nominations for cinematography, sound, and supporting actor⁵
Box office	Australia: $1,635,044; United States: $2,415,396²^•⁶
Restoration	Digitally restored by the National Film and Sound Archive; premiered at Arc cinema, Canberra, in August 2017¹

Spoilers

Story and cast

The year is 1965 in rural Australia. Danny Embling, first met in The Year My Voice Broke, is now in Form 5 at St. Alban's College, a boys' boarding school where the intellectual, stuttering outsider is considered "the school dag" and bears the brunt of cruel taunts.⁸ Across the lake sits Cirencester, a girls' boarding school; during a rugby match Danny meets Thandiwe Adjewa, the daughter of an African nationalist academic newly posted to Canberra, who is ostracised by the other girls because of the color of her skin. The two recognize kindred spirits, and through the relationship Danny learns more about life and about himself.⁸

The romance develops through shy glances in chapel, an inter-school debating competition, and a stolen kiss outside a school dance Danny is prevented from attending because of the length of his hair.⁹ Rotten Tomatoes' synopsis notes that the quietly developing romance is threatened by racial prejudice and Danny's awkwardness in affairs of the heart.¹⁰ The film's engagement with 1960s racism is explicit: in one dormitory scene the girls dismiss talk of Uganda, and Thandiwe's final letter to Danny reveals that she and her family have fled to Nairobi, underscoring how world politics impinge on private life in Australia.⁹

Casting. Thandie Newton, in her first significant screen role, plays Thandiwe; Nicole Kidman appears as Nicola Radcliffe, a senior at the girls' school, and Naomi Watts as Janet Odgers.¹^•² Noah Taylor reprised Danny Embling from the earlier film; Duigan has said the character was "only loosely based" on his own boarding-school experiences, a way of expressing the evolution of some of his ideas.⁹

Origins and production

Flirting was written before the film it is known as a sequel to. Duigan told FilmInk that he wrote it "about seven years before" The Year My Voice Broke, but could not get it financed at the time; after the earlier film opened well, he was able to move on to Flirting.³ A scholarly account of Kennedy Miller's production methods likewise records that, unlike the company's typical collaborative writing process, Duigan had written the script before that of the earlier film, which he conceived as a prequel; the two features are exceptions to the firm's usual method, though they reflect its willingness to grant creative latitude to personnel working under its umbrella.⁷

The film was made under the Kennedy Miller umbrella with producers Terry Hayes, George Miller, and Doug Mitchell, and photographed by Geoff Burton.² Filming took place from April to May 1989, with locations in Sydney, Bathurst, and Braidwood in New South Wales.⁴ Duigan recalled a modest but comfortable shoot: "We didn't have a big budget, but we knew the parameters," with no trailers, just an old bus for cast costuming and makeup. Nicole Kidman, he noted, "just mucked in with all the others," and she and Naomi Watts became good friends during production.³

Release and reception

Flirting was released in Australia on 21 March 1991 and distributed by Warner Bros.⁴ In the United States, the Samuel Goldwyn Company released it in November 1992, with a wide release on 14 November 1992.⁴^•⁶ It earned $1,635,044 in Australia, where it was the fourth largest Australian film of 1991, and $2,415,396 in the United States.⁴^•⁶

At the 1990 Australian Film Institute Awards the film won Best Film (for George Miller, Doug Mitchell, and Terry Hayes), Best Achievement in Editing (Robert Gibson), and Best Achievement in Production Design (Roger Ford), with nominations for Best Achievement in Cinematography (Geoff Burton), Best Achievement in Sound, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Bartholomew Rose).⁵ At the 1992 Boston Film Festival it won the Festival Prize for Best Independent Film and the Audience Award, both for John Duigan.⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 96% Tomatometer from 25 reviews, with a critics consensus calling it "a teen movie worth watching, thanks to emotionally engaging performances and an endearing script"; Variety's review called it "miles ahead of the average teen film."¹⁰

Place in Duigan's career and legacy

Flirting was the second part of an intended trilogy about Danny Embling, and Duigan's final credit with Kennedy Miller.²^•⁷ A third film was floated around the time of release; the New York Times critic Vincent Canby reported that Taylor would again play Danny in a final film set in Paris, but it was never made.³ Duigan later said Flirting remains one of his favorite of his own films, though it has been seen rather less than its predecessor, which he felt robbed it of some of its lustre.³

Scholarship on Australian cinema places the film, with The Year My Voice Broke, as typifying the Australian expression of the coming-of-age genre, with its gawky protagonist negotiating teenage sexual urges and existential angst on the periphery of the mainstream.¹¹ A Metro Magazine essay argues that Flirting has been relegated to the shadow of the earlier film and has become little more than a footnote in scholarly examinations of Australian cinema, despite being equally worthy of consideration.⁹ The 2017 digital restoration by the National Film and Sound Archive, premiered at Arc cinema in Canberra in August 2017 as part of the NFSA Restores program, was intended to address that oversight and affirm the film's position in Australia's film history.¹^•⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026