There is something deeply satisfying about watching a classic cinematic trope done well. The film version of Jasper Jones, the best-selling Australian novel of the same name by Craig Silvey, is a uniquely Australian take on the coming of age film, done very well.

In publicity material, director Rachel Perkins (Bran Nue Dae, 2009; Radiance, 1998) name-checks Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me (1986) – the story of four boys in a small Oregon town who set out to find the body of a missing child – as a central inspiration. Other examples come to mind, including Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and, closer to home, The Year My Voice Broke (1987), both of which portray the messy collision of childhood idealism with the mysterious, cynical world of adulthood.