Charlie (Vince Colosimo) and Anna (Maria Theodorakis) are nursing their best friend Gavin through the final days of his death from AIDS. Gavin asks to be given an overdose of morphine, a sympathetic doctor administers it, and Gavin’s soon in a coma. After a few minutes, there’s no end in sight to Gavin’s tortured breathing, and so Charlie kills him by suffocating him with a plastic bag.

So begins Walking On Water, a compelling drama about grief, friendship and growth, the best Australian film since lantana, and a ray of melancholy light after so many other turgid AIDS films.

Racked with guilt over his role in Gavin’s death, Charlie’s soon gorging on left over morphine, drinking too much, fighting with Anna and losing his boyfriend, Frank. Anna embarks on an affair with Gavin’s naive brother, country boy Simon (Nathaniel Dean) who’s travelled to Sydney with his mother and sister to see Gavin’s last days. Simon jumps head first into Anna’s world of clubs and drugs, with fairly predictable consequences.

But this isn’t a film about urban gay life, or discrimination, AIDS, euthanasia, society, blah blah blah. It’s a drama, filled with realistic and contradictory characters involved in largely unsolveable conflicts. It’s a credit to screenwriter Roger Monk that the hot topics of the plot are relegated to the background, a welcome step away from the Ricky Lake atmosphere of Philadelphia or American Beauty.

We get to know the characters of Walking On Water as we would get to know people in real life, gradually, piece by piece, and this is what makes them so compelling. The film is a third over before we’re even certain that Charlie and Frank are lovers, and worked out how Anna fits into the picture. We aren’t sure if we like them, if we agree with them, but we’re always interested in them, because they keep us on our toes by acting unexpectedly.

They’re not Tom Hanks style robots, ravaged by HOLLYWAIDS, or androids like the Aboriginal girls in Rabbit-Proof Fence - engineered for shock effect, and public sympathy for a good cause. They are real, and mercifully free of the eccentricity that normally plagues Australian screenwriters. There isn’t a quirky, ocker character in sight, and even Australian stage and screen veteran Judi Farr surprises with her threatening and complicated performance as Gavin’s hardened mother.

Colosimo makes no fuss about Charlie’s homosexuality, or the plot points that put his journey in motion. Charlie’s struggles are personal, not political, and his sexuality is matter of fact - incidental. Walking on Water’s Charlie is "Rex" (Colosimo’s macho-doctor role in hit Australian TV series "The Secret Life Of Us") minus the self-esteem and the medical degree.

Maria Theodorakis is outstanding, too, bringing ash-tray grit to a complex role and turning the tables on our expectations that underneath it all she’s really an earth-mother fag hag.

Walking On Water takes us into the gay club drug world, and it’s great to see that place looking a little seedy on screen for a change. As in Head On, the gay nightlife scene of Walking On Water is a place that’s hard edged, chemically-driven, a place where things can go wrong, not the welcoming, hospital-clean space full of nice people falling in love and having a whacky fun time that it’s shown to be in many gay-interest films (and most gay print media social pages).

Simon drops an eccy, has a wild time for an hour or so, then feels sick, freaks out, thinks he’s going to die. Across the dance floor, Charlie and Frank pick up a young spunk, go home and do lines, jump into bed, etc., but Charlie responds with worn-out enthusiasm - he looks like he’s getting ready to do the washing up.

There’s a heart-sinking melancholy washed over most of the film, as we sense that Charlie and Anna know they need sea-changes, but are held back by habit, and their love for each other. Production Designer Rebecca Cohen has created a labyrinthine house chock full with knick knacks and photos, and in this memory-saturated setting, Charlie and Anna look like ghosts, haunting their old stomping ground, waiting for a new place to go.