Within the confines of a seedy Brisbane boarding house, Gordon, the inert protagonist, and his demanding, eczema-suffering girlfriend Cynthia repeatedly attempt to connect with each other. Unlike other films portraying sex in a rather open and frank way, Praise is less about sex than about failure. Being a loser has been a regular mainstay of independent films for a long time, but this film attempts to expose the emotional strata rather than the social aspects. Cynthia's crudeness becomes the expression of self-defeating behaviour and Gordon's torpor is played for much more than laughs from the audience. Praise is in many ways an era-defining Australian film, accurately portraying and examining the contemporary landscape of heterosexual love and the blurring of traditional gender roles and emotional states.
