Sydney Film Festival Review: Strangerland

Joseph Fiennes & Nicole Kidman in Strangerland

In her narrative feature debut, documentarian Kim Farrant examines the many levels and angles of anguish experienced by a mother Catherine Parker (Nicole Kidman) and father Matthew (Joseph Fiennes) whose children go missing: a tween boy Tommy (Nicholas Hamilton) and a sexually charged teenage girl Lily (Maddison Brown).  The family is new to their outback town and the parents rely heavily on an ineffectual detective David Ray (Hugo Weaving) with questionable ethics.  The story begins in the vein of a supernatural thriller, complete with a gloomy score and dour voiceover.  The boy is prone to sleepwalking, and the daughter follows suit as well.  And, while it's initially treated as a mysterious phenomenon, it's never grounded in an intriguing connection and serves as a red herring after a spell. The actual disappearance/kidnapping concludes with a similar fate.  Farrant seemed most interested in capturing the internal horror, confusion, and futility experienced by parents who endure their vanished children. Each parent has their own coping mechanism and doesn't know their true fortitude and propensity to collapse until they're placed in these harrowing circumstances.  

At first, there is a beauty in their surrounding vastness, as much of their madness is confined to the tiny setting entrapping each member of the family, which isn't necessarily of their choosing.  Kidman, in a fully committed performance, borrows somewhat from the template of her character in The Paperboy.  While her Charlotte Bless was driven by a foolish curiosity for danger, Cath is more cursed by a desire that confounds her.  Lisa Flanagan as the detective's Aboriginal lover is quite good.  And Brown makes quite an impression as the sexpot teenager.

However forgiving I found myself to this film, the cryptic nature was often frustrating.  The movie can't seem to decide what genre it is and when it finally settles on being a dramatic mood piece, it does so rather inadequately.  Visually, the camera is all over the map, quite literally at time.  A rather expensive aerial shot sweeping through a cavern is sliced up and spread throughout the film and lacks a resonant relationship to the parents.  It's actually in the quieter moments where Farrant achieves anything striking such as the shot of Cath, who has shunned her domestication which has imprisoned her, praying for her daughter in the middle of the desert.  However, by the point we learn the uncontained extent of her nymphomania, she has already become somewhat of an unintended joke.  And, oddly, for a dustbowl town experiencing an incredible hot summer, the heat feels telegraphed, and rather room temperature.  "That was the worst film I've ever seen," said an audience member as we departed the State Theatre.  That was certainly one way of looking at the film.  While I had empathy for his response, I found the reaction rather harsh and reductive. The screenplay most definitely meandered, and Farrant may have failed to properly develop and tie all of her elements together, but she still managed to create a talking piece of sorts that has earned more than a quick dismissal.  But, still, it was a bit of a slog to sit through after a while.