A couple of weeks ago I was in London and had the pleasure of watching Cate Blanchett perform in an adaptation of German playwright Botho Strauss’s Big and Small at the Barbican.

Well-worth seeking out for the eccentric charm of the touching love story between the two oddballs at its centre- Paula Fleri-Soler

As expected, the Australian actress gave a powerful and poignant performance, another astonishing role in the annals of her 20-year theatre and film career.

I first spotted the actress in one of her first feature films, the movie Oscar and Lucinda, released almost 15 years ago.

Directed by Gillian Armstrong, the film is based on the 1988 Booker Prize-winning novel by Australian writer Peter Carey. It was adapted for the screenby Laura Jones, and co-starsRalph Fiennes.

Fiennes is Oscar Hopkins, an Anglican cleric in the mid-1800s; a man who, despite his firm belief in his calling is an outcast due to his obsessive gambling habit.

Lucinda Leplastrier (Cate Blanchett) is a young Australian heiress, a feminist way ahead of her time whose fascination with glass prompts her to buy a glass factory, while her compulsion to gamble is the cause for much gossip in Sydney society.

They are two red-headed misfits, defiant of the roles society imposed on them, destinedto meet.

They do so quite by chance. While seeking recreation on an ocean crossing from London to Sydney, Lucinda chooses which door to go through by reciting that age-old favourite “eeny meeny miney .” And there sits Oscar, on the other side ofthe door.

Their relationship is based on their proclivity for gambling on anything, anytime, anywhere. In the meantime, their friendship blossoms and in a gesture of folly, he challenges her to build a church entirely of glass and he will transport it to the outback. It’s a challenge she can’t refuse, and so begins an incredible odyssey.

Oscar and Lucinda is a Victorian costume drama elevated to something special by the guiding hand of director Armstrong.

It is everything you would expect from a film of this ilk – with beautiful production design meticulously recreating the sumptuous drawing rooms of Australian high society; the lush cinematography capturing the sweeping vistas of the scenic countryside and the elegant costumes, most notably Lucinda’s trousers-under-a-dress combo.

Yet it is more than just a visually-arresting film. Armstrong lets the story unfold with a slow leisurely pace, peppering the action with enough moments of sly humour and human drama that it never gets tedious, thereby giving us time to truly getunder the skin of her two main characters, brought to life in two astonishing performances.

Oscar – described as an ‘odd bod’ by his best friend – is anervous, fumbling, edgy man; a naive man-child, ill-equipped to deal with the world at large, a result of the strict upbringing of his widowed father.

He is a servant of two masters, God and gambling; and he spends his life desperately trying to reconcile the two – witness the way his body language changes and his eyes light up as he explains to Lucinda with childlike enthusiasm why God cannot see gambling as a sin.

In his mission to deliver the church of glass he sees a profound if unorthodox way of expressing his faith... and his undying love for Lucinda. In bringing this quirky, conflicted character to life Fiennes is at his most endearing.

At the time Oscar and Lucinda was released, Blanchett was still Cate Who? (It was, admittedly, a phase that seemed to last all of five minutes, given her next role, in Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth would propel her into the big leagues.)

The character of Lucinda is best described by the narrator of the piece (Geoffrey Rush), when he explains that her mother had produced a “proud square peg... in the full knowledge that from coast to coast there were nothing but round holes.”

In other words, someone different, certainly unique – the sort of role Blanchett would continue to pursue as her film career developed – a feisty, fiercely independent woman, determinedly carving out her place in a man’s world. She brings to Lucinda the intelligence and luminosity that the actress effortlessly brings to her roles.

Inexplicably, Oscar and Lucinda earned negligible box office returns and although the film unsurprisingly won five Australian Film Institute awards it failed to gain any high profile nominations, although it garnered some very warm reviews and is loved by critics.

It is certainly a little gem of a movie, certainly well-worth seeking out for the eccentric charm of the touching love story between the two oddballs at its centre.