gregking4 Review of Beautiful Kate

Beautiful Kate (2009)

a bleak but ultimately haunting and well made drama

[8/10 · 28 July 2009]

Beautiful Kate is another local film to delve into a bleak and dysfunctional world, but at least this one has some impressive credentials on both sides of the camera that will potentially help it pull in a larger audience. Beautiful Kate has been adapted by Rachel Ward from Newton (Cutter's Way) Thornburg's novel, which was in the tradition of the sort of Gothic southern fiction that gave us tales like Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, etc. Ward has successfully transplanted Thornburg's essentially American novel to the isolated Australian bush, while retaining its powerful themes. Beautiful Kate is also like transplanting a Tennessee Williams to rural Australia. It has all the usual ingredients – the dying patriarch, the dysfunctional family, the prodigal son returning home, incest, rancid secrets revealed, ancient wounds picked over until they are raw and bleeding. And then there is a final catharsis that allows for closure and the family to move on. At the request of his sister Sally (Rachel Griffiths), author Ned Kendall (Ben Mendelsohn) returns to his drought-ravaged family farm after a twenty year absence to visit his dying father. He hasn't seen his estranged father since he left home following the tragic death of his twin sister in a car crash and the subsequent suicide of his brother. He brings with him his latest girlfriend Toni (Maeve Dermody), a city bred girl who quickly tires of the boring routine of life on the farm. And when she learns of some of the Kendall family's dark secrets she flees in disgust. Ned's return brings a lot of simmering resentments, guilt and unresolved issues to the surface. Ward honed her skills on a number of short films, including the powerful AFI award winning The Big House, and she handles her debut feature superbly. The film is nicely layered and textured, and Ward reveals the tawdry secrets and painful back story in a series of extended flashbacks. She draws excellent performances from her small but solid cast. Mendelsohn finds his meatiest role for quite sometime and he rises to the occasion with a rich, complex and quite raw performance as the son consumed by guilt. Bryan Brown is good as belligerent patriarch, a once proud man struck down and left embittered and crippled by tragedy and debilitating congenital heart disease. The scenes these two share are quite powerful and provide plenty of fire works. Dermody makes the most of her role, while Griffiths is effective in her few scenes as the long-suffering and stoic Sally. Newcomer Sophie Lowe (also in Anna Kokkinos' upcoming family drama Blessed) is very good as the sexy and beguiling adolescent Kate. Cinematographer Andrew Commis has shot the film in widescreen, and he captures some quite evocative images of the beautiful Flinders Ranges locations. The run down farm, a far cry from the bustling place of their childhood, is hauntingly symbolic of the father's failings and of the slow destruction of the family.