Released August 6, 2009
In her adaptation of the novel by Newton Thornburg, director Rachel Ward’s great achievement in her feature-length debut is tackling a touchy subject with sensitivity and without prejudice. By refusing to impose morality on her characters or her audience, she creates a poignant story of a fragmented family in outback Australia.
Ned (Ben Mendelsohn) returns with his girlfriend to his family home to see his dying father, Bruce (Bryan Brown) at the behest of his younger sister, Sally (Rachel Griffiths). Ned is a writer, and hence must be a bitter and complicated soul, though his resentment of his father and family stems more from a pivotal event from his adolescence: his other sister, the beautiful Kate of the title played by Sophie Lowe, was tragically killed.
The events that lead up to the pivotal moment are told in flashback as Ned struggles to reconcile his relationship with his father – each blaming the other for the tragedy. Though Griffiths feels oddly ill at ease, Mendelsohn is the standout in an otherwise uniformly fine cast. His simultaneously blunt but well-intentioned Ned helps make this potentially difficult material engrossing and engaging. The Flinders Ranges is outstandingly photographed by cinematographer Andrew Commis, the remote setting effectively reflecting the characters’ desolation. The flashbacks are shot in a more haphazard improvisational style, making them distinct but no less effective.
What’s unsettling or perhaps surprising is that the love story that emerges is equal parts unsettling and seductive, and completely understandable given their limited exposure to the outside world and infusion of adolescent hormones. It’s this story of sexual awakening that is the most profound and provocative. In comparison, the more traditional reconciliation between father and son feels more routine, but no less organic or inevitable.
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