Financed with help from the Adelaide Film Festival and the South Australian Film Corporation (of course), Kangaroo Island is a family/character drama with a few funny lines and, as usual, a certain earnestness.
However, the central performances mostly compensate for the problems, with Rebecca Breeds particularly good as the messy and very-nearly-unsympathetic Lou Wells, a movie and TV star in a bit of a slump in Los Angeles (although this production obviously never left South Australia or KI). During an especially bad day when she’s rejected by her ex, her agent and her friends, she rather improbably agrees to fly back to her home on the Island by way of a ticket sent by her Dad Rory (Erik Thomson).
Immediately all the old wounds are opened, with her born-again sister Freya (Adelaide Clemens) seriously uneasy and her husband Ben (Joel Jackson) looking decidedly (and understandably) awkward. Flashbacks show what went on years ago, and why Lou escaped to the States, but she also doesn’t understand the rules of this sort of tale, and at first somehow has no idea why Dad wants her there.
That’s only one of the implausible elements here, and yet Breeds and Clemens are strong, even as their characters descend into a love triangle – or is it actually a rectangle? Thomson is also nicely understated as Rory, and much better than he tends to be in some fairly dismal TV stuff.
Although, in fact, it’s Auntie Rose (Julie Wood) who gets the best and most amusing line – “There’s more drama here than Home And Away!” – which is pretty biting, given that topliner Breeds started her career on that very show.
Kangaroo Island is in cinemas now.
KANGAROO ISLAND (M)
(3 stars out of 5)
