This is a gripping, touching and sometimes funny film with a smart script and a top cast. It's another celebration of Australian ordinariness, a sweet, somewhat uneven, road movie, in which Mirando Otto is at her awkward, luminous best.
The story follows three friends on a four day trip across the Nullabour to Perth, where Otto hopes to reconnect with her estranged mother and to find the father she never knew. Along for the ride are Otto's boyfriend, a charming UK Indian overstayer and his supposedly reformed junkie mate played by Noah Taylor. She is searching; they are escaping - escaping from Taylor's angry crim brother played by Ben Mendelsohn, from whom they have stolen a stash of drugs.
On the way to Perth they pick up a charming, drunken rock singer (Hugo Weaving), who is at a loose end after walking out on his band halfway across the desert.
Like the characters, the film is somewhat directionless, but likeable despite that. Weaving puts in another good performance as the boozy musician, and Ben Mendelsohn has left his young knockabout roles behind and plays a more menacing crim here, something he has since gone on to play in countless Hollywood films.
A very satisfying film.
The story follows three friends on a four day trip across the Nullabour to Perth, where Otto hopes to reconnect with her estranged mother and to find the father she never knew. Along for the ride are Otto's boyfriend, a charming UK Indian overstayer and his supposedly reformed junkie mate played by Noah Taylor. She is searching; they are escaping - escaping from Taylor's angry crim brother played by Ben Mendelsohn, from whom they have stolen a stash of drugs.
On the way to Perth they pick up a charming, drunken rock singer (Hugo Weaving), who is at a loose end after walking out on his band halfway across the desert.
Like the characters, the film is somewhat directionless, but likeable despite that. Weaving puts in another good performance as the boozy musician, and Ben Mendelsohn has left his young knockabout roles behind and plays a more menacing crim here, something he has since gone on to play in countless Hollywood films.
A very satisfying film.