STRANGERLAND

3.5 stars (out of 5)

This often intense début Aussie feature drama from director Kim Farrant has a powerful sense of dusty small-town Ocker life and strong playing from the supporting cast, but stars Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes are both stuck with irritatingly repressed and at times unbelievable characters, and deliver mannered performances. No wonder nobody in the unnamed (and fictional) outback town trusts them, mate.

The Parkers have recently moved to the middle of nowhere and none of them are happy: pharmacist Dad Matthew (Fiennes) is tense and controlling; Mum Catherine (Kidman) agonisingly longs for family unity in trademark Nicole Kidman style; young son Tommy (Nicholas Hamilton) roams the empty streets at night; and flirty teenage daughter Lily (Maddison Brown in a fine, unsettling performance) acts out and answers back to her Dad. After an argument, both the kids leave the house, but when they don’t return by the next morning and Matthew seems less concerned than he should be, all the family’s secrets begin to be hauled out into the light. Detective David Rae (Hugo Weaving, always good) is soon on the case, but when his girlfriend Coreen (Lisa Flanagan) and her brain-injured brother Burtie (Meyne Wyatt, amiable in an iffy role) get involved and still more judgments are passed, the actual truth becomes harder and harder to locate.

It’s this judging aspect to Farrant’s film (as written by Michael Kinirons and Fiona Seres) that’s supposedly important here, as we the audience are called upon to judge the Parkers just like the community around them does so happily. And we do: we judge Matthew and Catherine a pair of irksomely whining fools who care more about themselves and all their lies and bullshit than their own kids. Now that’s Strangerland.