Strangerland

From art house classics like Walkabout and Picnic at Hanging Rock to twisted cult favourites such as Wolf Creek and Wake in Fright, the eerie stillness of the Australian outback has long been a distinctive feature of the country's cinema. But while director Kim Farrant superbly captures the haunting, parched beauty of the Aussie interior in her debut feature, she stumbles when it comes to the emotional landscape, with the movie flickering uncertainly in tone. Strangerland starts off like a thriller: the already strained marriage of Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes, new arrivals in a remote outback town, disintegrates further when their two children, teenage temptress Maddison Brown and her young brother Nicholas Hamilton, disappear into the wilderness. Unfortunately, the intriguing mystery elements of the story become submerged in psychosexual melodrama as Kidman's grip on reality begins to crumble. A missed opportunity then, although the performances are first-rate, particularly Hugo Weaving as a sympathetic local policeman.