Categories: football
      Date: Aug 18, 2012
     Title: Good fences make good neighbours 

DEALING with the neighbours from hell is something not many of us will have to cope with in our lifetimes.

But it's a real problem for young couple Max and Therese when they buy a house in a leafy Adelaide suburb.

On one side, the neighbours are pleasant and agreeable, But on the other side lives King (Gary Waddell), an older man who seems to be drug befuddled most of the time.

Worse still for Max (Dan Wylie) and Therese (Bojana Novakovic) is that King's associates use the house as a drop-off point for drug deals.

There's action happening next door to Max and Therese at all hours of the day and night.

What can they do? Initially the couple try to befriend King, even to reason with him.

None of these strategies work. So lawyers are consulted and more than once the couple phone the police.

Surprisingly they even discuss among themselves only, of course, how they might dispose of King.

Therese, in particular, reveals a surprisingly cunning criminal mind.

Director Rolf de Heer (The Tracker, Ten Canoes) really mines the vein of frustration which runs through people forced to deal with objectionable neighbours.

He's always up for a parable is de Heer. This time it's about facing The Dark Side, or even The Other.

And he pours very cold, icy water on the view that despite all our differences somehow we can all get along.