Look Both Ways (12A)

If Look Both Ways were a plant it would be a hybrid of magnolia and lantana, because it's the films with those names which must have been in Sarah Witt's DVD player when she was writing and directing her own pensive, Altmanesque comedy-drama. Set over the course of one bakingly hot weekend, its characters cross paths on the industrial outskirts of Adelaide, and they're all preoccupied by life and death - mostly death.

One of them is an illustrator (Justine Clark, inset) who's just home from her father's funeral, and who keeps envisaging her own gruesome demise in pencil and watercolour animations. Another is a photographer with cancer (William McInnes) who keeps seeing his possible future in photo-montages. With authentic performances and piquant dialogue, it's the friction of drollery and sadness rubbing against each other that gives this rich, well-crafted debut so much warmth.