moviereview - Lucky Country

moviereview

LUCKY COUNTRY

	A young father tries to hold his family together in the turn-of-the-century Australian outback. Strangers have different plans...	score 3+	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Aden Young, Toby Wallace, Pip Miller, Robert Menzies, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, Helmut Bakaitis, Neil Pigot

Director
Kriv Stenders

Screenwriter
Andy Cox

Country
Australia

Rating / Running Time
M / 96 minutes

Australian Release
July 2009

Official Site

There’s a popular belief that the esoteric Kriv Stenders is one of Australia’s upcoming auteurs. On the back of critically mixed, some would say inscrutable, offerings like Boxing Day and The Illustrated Family Doctor, Lucky Country is a considerably more accessible entry into the Stender’s catalogue. Mostly. Set on a dysfunctional farm near the Victorian gold fields, he keeps a tight focus on the anxiety wrought upon a small family by petty intruders at the turn of last century. This springboard raises larger issues, notably the descent of man in an era of great personal gain. Timely notions, even if they’re not fully realised.

Stender’s DOP Jules O’Loughlin (September, Kokoda) beautifully recreates the intense psychological claustrophobia felt in empty Australian bush – wobbly-cam notwithstanding. There’s a grimy layer of filth – visual and moral – that informs a staunch, fear-driven script by first-timer Andy Cox. You can almost taste the dirt as single father Nat (Aden Young) tries to provide for his children on unforgiving land. When hostile vagrants pause for company then stage a hostile takeover, it’s left to Nat’s son to address the imbalance. Tom, like his father, is ill equipped for such a task and the future takes a savage turn for the worse.

Despite the punchy narrative and good looks, there’s an intangible dissatisfaction let loose by a vague, frustratingly uncertain close that recalls Vincent Ward off his game. It’s not enough that Nat is religiously uptight, times are tough and men are cruel. Lucky Country promises to explore more than that and in failing to deliver far beyond the norms of a psychological thriller, disappoints in the final reel.

Stenders may yet come good on the auteur label, it’s all there, but this is not that film.

// COLIN FRASER