In the film Radiance, the audience are introduced to three young women whose relationship has been destroyed by a person who is no longer alive, their mother; We're strangers because of her'. When they reunite for her funeral, they reveal shocking truths and secrets of their past. Only when they accept what went before, will they be freed from their home, their mother and most of all their problems of being aboriginal women. This is why the film is so evocative, because it deals visually with the problems of not only the three women but also other Aboriginal women like themselves. The film is set in a seemingly inaccessible region of Queensland and portrays to the audience the sense of entrapment that binds the sisters to their past. The contrast of the light, fire and heat versus the water and islands, complement both the characters and plot. The setting emphasizes the isolation of the three women and their Aboriginal background, these being the key elements in the film. .
Cressy is the eldest of the three sisters and is acted by Rachael Maza. The arrival of Cressy is announced with her entering in a taxi and with Nona inside the house listening to the opera Madame Butterfly'. The song Madame Butterfly' symbolizes Cressy through her opera singing. Cressy is tense and introvert, while most opera singers are quite flamboyant and gregarious people. The use of the taxi shows the audience that Cressy is a breath from the outside world, tall, statuous, elegant, proper and beautiful. When Cressy approaches the house, the audience see her through a lattice, thus giving the effect that bars surround the house and she is on the outside peering in; a stranger to her own home. The lattice acts as a barrier between the sisters and the outside world. They are trapped inside the house by memories and once they're reunited within the home, they find it difficult to escape.
Being a child of the stolen generation and suffering the trauma of rape, as a child of eleven years old, Cressy is afraid to accept her past, causing her to appear uncomfortable in the house.