Review by John P. Harvey.

3.5/5

After flying to Los Angeles to star in a television series, and spending the next ten years working — or, more recently, not working — in television, Lou Wells (Rebecca Breeds) unwillingly returns to her childhood home of Kangaroo Island for a short stay at the urgent request of her father, Rory (Erik Thomson). But reuniting with him; with her sister, Freya (Adelaide Clemens); and with Freya’s husband, Ben (Joel Jackson) — who once was Lou’s boyfriend — renews fraught relationships and rekindles old hurts and fresh doubts between them all.

Complicating matters are the plans that Rory springs on his daughters for his own life and for the future of their home. As though this weren’t enough to muddle through, Lou then learns that Freya has secret plans of her own: plans that would leave Lou without the home of her childhood memories.

Kangaroo Island explores with subtlety the family relationships that Lou has set aside for most of the past decade, the nature of its characters’ various emotional hurts, and their attempts either to overcome or to turn away from those hurts. The film’s close camera work, though shaky at times, brings these difficulties to visual life by revealing the innermost feelings of Lou and Freya through fine acting as they grapple with the dilemmas that arise from life-changing revelations and the futures that they leave in contention.

A family drama devoid of villains and undue stress and set in beautiful beachside country, this Australian feature makes interesting but easy entertainment.