South Solitary

IT would be easy to dismiss Shirley Barrett’s (Love Serenade) whimsical period romance South Solitary as another unspectacular and unchallenging Australian film – and many will.

While a diversion from the dynamic, forward-thinking film making of the past couple of years – which sparked something of a revival for the domestic industry – it should still find a place among mature audiences clinging to fading memories of the way our films once were.

There is nothing confronting here, rather a safe and innocent ride that meanders at a Sunday stroll pace and is made for the ‘older’ set wanting to recapture a time when life seemed simpler and love was, well, easier to find.

Unmarried 35-year-old Meredith (Miranda Otto) arrives at a remote lighthouse island in 1927 to help her uncle Wadsworth (real-life father Barry Otto), who has been appointed as head lighthouse keeper.

Problems arise between Meredith and the island’s only resident family – the Stanleys – after head of the house Harry (WAAPA graduate Rohan Nichol) is overlooked for the top keeper job.

While missing her fiancé, who perished in World War I, Meredith is open to love, but doesn’t necessarily seek it, at least not until she and the withdrawn Fleet (Marton Csokas, Romulus, My Father) find themselves stranded on the island as its only two inhabitants.

The auburn-haired Otto – who most recently appeared in the critically acclaimed Australian feature Blessed and the short-lived, glossy US TV series Cashmere Mafia – delivers a restrained yet spirited performance, with a radiant screen presence and perfect comic timing.

But the captivator here is the aesthetic, with costume designer Edie Kurzer faithfully capturing 1920s Australian rural styling: Otto is equal parts cute as a button and ravishing in gorgeous tweed and woollen vintage ensembles, set against Anna Howard’s beautifully photographed desolate landscape.

South Solitary (M)

Directed by: Shirley Barrett

Starring: Miranda Otto, Marton Csokas

Rating: Three stars

Screening: from July 29

Reviewed by: Emilia Vranjes

What everyone else is thinking

Colmart

30/07/2010

I think its time that your reviewers stopped patronizing the ‘older’ set - we are just as entitled to have movies made for us as the "younger" set does. IN fact I generally find that most movies rejected out of hand by your (and most media) reviewers prove to be excellent ones

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - there is nothing wrong with movies about better times - and believe me they were better times, too