The husband and wife team of Nadia Tass and David Parker - she directs, he usually writes the scripts and photographs - have been responsible for the successful comedies Malcolm, The Big Steal and Mr Reliable. With Amy, they are trying something a little different - a heart-warming story centering around a little girl so traumatised by something terrible she witnessed at the age of 4 that she`s no longer able to speak or to hear. The idea isn`t exactly new, but Tass and Parker give it a fresh twist - Amy, wonderfully played by Alana De Roma, CAN communicate - by song. Amy lives with her widowed mother, Tanya - the excellent Rachel Griffiths - but it`s a precarious existence, because the people from the welfare department are on her trail. The pair move from a country farm to the back streets of Melbourne, where Robert, Ben Mendelsohn, a musician neighbour, soon discovers Amy`s secret...Amy is a boldly offbeat film which succeeds, for most of its length, on an emotional level. The concept is an unusual one - the idea that people are forced to sing if they want Amy to hear them - and visually the film is always impressive - not only thanks to Parker`s fine widescreen photography - but also because of the very impressive street set, created by production designer Jon Dowding. The film falters, though, in the too-broadly conceived marginal characters - apart from Robert, the denizens of the street where Amy and Tanya live are not very interesting or believable characters, and the film seems needlessly padded when too much time is devoted to them. Still, for the most part, Amy is really enchanting.