 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
Beautiful Kate 15
SCREENINGS
Prodigal son Ned Kendall returns to his family home in rural South Australia during what are assumed to be the last few months of his father Bruce’s life. Ned is a writer with a girlfriend half his age who has left the nursing of his cantankerous father to his younger sister Sally so he can escape the confines of this familial space. As Ned returns, so do memories of his youth growing up in the house alongside his twin sister, the titular Kate, and older brother, who both died during his teens. Locating the root of Ned’s fractious relationship with Bruce in these emotionally fraught formative years, the story oscillates between past and present, dreamily but ruthlessly uncovering the truth of those years.
BBFC advice: Contains very strong language, strong sex, and incest theme
“Beautiful Kate confronts some truly dysfunctional family issues and does so with a brave lack of moral judgement, skilfully padding out its characters with some mean and immoral traits but never letting them veer into the purely dislikeable. In fact, despite some shocking behaviour, the film’s characters have a heightened humanity, which is mainly down to the exceptional cast... Ward elicits multi-faceted performances from her cast, especially Mendelsohn, whose past and present is infused with an eroticism that’s vulnerable and threatening by turns. His Ned is a man on the run from a confusion entrenched in his youth that refuses to be exorcised, even when thrashed out between father and son in the final few days they have left together... Beautifully acted and shot, this isn’t comforting cinema but is bold and haunting, marking Ward out as a director of note.”
UK RELEASE 19 April 2010
DIRECTOR Rachel Ward
CAST Ben Mendelsohn, Bryan Brown, Maeve Dermody, Sophie Lowe, Rachel Griffiths
RUNNING TIME 101 minutes
COUNTRY Australia
official film website and trailer
|
