Character Profile: Matilda Hunter

Then and Now: Indiana Evans as Matilda Hunter

When I tell people that my favourite character in soap is Matilda Hunter from Home and Away, I am almost universally greeted by a look of surprise. And understandably so too: she's whiny, she's petulant, she's flaky and she's not often involved in the best storylines. It's when you look at the reasons behind her behaviour, however, that I think you can see something unique in her, something that separates her from the other characters in her world...

If you've seen the movie Adaptation you'll know it's about real-life Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. A neurotic mess, his inability to successfully adapt a particular story for screen sees him turn the story into something else; the story of his fretting and worrying about his inability to successfully adapt that story. It's an amazing movie and a masterpiece of self-reflexivity in film. Matilda Hunter always reminds me of it.

Matilda's life in Summer Bay hasn't been an easy one. She has been hospitalised on many occasions. She's been kidnapped. She found a dead body in the woods. All her siblings have left town. Both her parents have died. She watched her mother and stepfather divorce. Almost every guy she has ever liked has overlooked her in favour of, or betrayed her with, her friends, sisters or even other guys. And that's just some of the stuff that directly relates to her. What about all the things that happen to people she loves? Death, disease, rape, injury, brainwashing, betrayal, abuse -- I could go on, but you know as well as I do all the things that happen to people in soaps. What I find so interesting about Matilda is that she is one of the only characters I've ever seen who seems to have an innate sense that all the drama that comes with being in a soap world just isn't normal. Often depressed and overwhelmed by the constant woes that come with living in a place like Summer Bay - eventually needing to go to a retreat to remedy her seemingly reasonable reaction - Matilda seems to display an almost unconscious self-reflexivity within the soap world.

Most characters in the "Sunny soaps", of course, have a remarkable ability to shrug off terrible strife with ease. Maybe it's the constant exposure to the sun that gives its inhabitants such a thick hide, but whatever it is, it's what allows Summer Bay to be so forgiving of rapists like Kane and Jonah or woman-beaters like Macca. It's what allows them to move on from terrible traumas in the space of a week. In the soap world, the action moves forward so quickly that for most there is no time for real reflection, past is past and characters revert to their default setting between their own major individual storylines. Matilda, however, despite being created by and raised within this environment, does not seem to have developed this tough skin, this ability to be revert to her default happy-go-lucky self. In fact, if anything, one could argue that the state of paranoia, distrust and depression we often see are her default. She's not like everyone else in that sense.

In her relationship with Ric she was constantly jealous and paranoid despite Ric's early saint-like behaviour. Why? Because somehow Matilda seems to know that a teenage relationship in a soap is doomed to fail sooner or later; that somewhere around the corner, things were about to go wrong in a big way and she simply wanted to be prepared for it. As a soap viewer you want to scream at her for ruining things with Ric but at the same time you can't blame her because you know she's right. Matilda knows that happiness, or even normality, is not the status quo in her world, and that she'd be a fool to forget it.

Compare her to her best friend (and my least favourite character) Cassie Turner for a second and you'll see the difference. Cassie bounces from horrible relationship to horrible relationship with a smile on her face and a reckless naivety that leaves her devastated every time. "Sure, my last violent maniac boyfriend hurt me but my new violent maniac boyfriend never would!" she seems to exclaim every other week. Matilda would never do things like this. Matilda has an awareness slightly above her station and when things come crashing down on her it's generally due to an internal collapse, a result of her inherent fragility rather than active stupidity. (And obviously it's a lot easier to root for characters in soap when they're not too obviously complicit in their own inevitable downfalls.)

Admittedly there have been some changes visible in Matilda since she visited that retreat, and she does seem more mature, but even those changes seem to play into this reading of her character. One could fairly argue that she has now simply learned how to better cope with the pressures of living in a soap world rather than losing sight of the fact completely. Her recent decision to repeat Year 12, for example, stemmed from her desire to avoid an unnecessarily stressful period; an act of sensible thinking obviously not common among her peers, who often prefer to rush headlong into disaster.

So whether it's deliberate or not - and I'd almost guarantee that it's not - Matilda Hunter can be viewed as somewhat of an abstract character, an aberration, and as someone who watches soaps in an abstract way that's something I get a great kick out of.

Finally, I would be remiss to not mention Indiana Evans. For such a young actress she really does do a good job and continues to improve with each year. If not for her I doubt such a textured reading of her character would be possible.

I look forward to seeing what's next in store for Mattie and, more importantly, how she copes with it all. I fear that one day she'll wake up and be just like everyone else, aloof to the machinations of her strange world. Hopefully that won't be for some time.