Judy Davis, Charlotte Rampling and Geoffrey Rush star in 'The Eye of the Storm'.
Film reviews
By Rama Gaind
Film: The Eye of the Storm
Stars: Geoffrey Rush, Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis, Robyn Nevin, Helen Morse, Colin Friels
Director: Fred Schepisi
Producers: Gregory J. Read and Antony Waddington
Screenplay: Judy Morris
Edited by Kate Williams
Australian director Fred Schepisi turns his hand at turning a novel by Australia’s Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick White into a film – and pulls off a successful feat with The Eye of the Storm.
Set in the early 1970s, this family saga has Elizabeth Hunter (Rampling) in the centre, a wealthy old woman, who is dying in her Sydney mansion. Her two estranged children Basil (Rush) and Dorothy (Davis), successful in their own right, fly to her bedside from Europe.
The family gathering raises all the family’s familiar resentments and frictions and they struggle to come to terms with who they are and what they mean to each other.
This is a moving drama featuring a brutal exploration of family relationships – and what defines the prickly hidden feelings of love and hate, comedy and tragedy.
The casting is brilliant: Rampling is terrific as the self-obsessed matriarch, Rush is at excellent as a gifted boaster on a personal quest and Davis is at her delicate best.
Schepisi takes charge meticulously and evokes the era perfectly, while Paul Grabowky’s jazzy score is a fancy supplement.
Stylish drama.
* * *
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