The Eye of the Storm

Overview

Patrick White is an Australian national treasure. Or at least, so we're told; he's hardly read among Gen Ys and even Gen Xers. Conducting an impromptu poll among under-30s, I found only one person who had read Patrick White, and that was because his name, too, was Patrick White, and he felt obliged.

However, that might be about to change, with one of White's novels finally adapted to the screen, 38 years after it was written and 21 years after his death. The Eye of the Storm is delightfully wry, distinctly antipodean and surprisingly affecting. It makes you feel alive to the depth of Australian stories we've yet to plumb. The film has also, significantly, roped in the great Australian talents of actors Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis and director Fred Schepisi (Fierce Creatures), so you'll definitely be paying attention.

The Eye of the Storm joins Elizabeth Hunter (Charlotte Rampling), the matriarch of an ultra-elite Australian family of the kind we like to kid ourselves we left back in Britain, on her sick bed, where she is in a declining state following a stroke. Her adult children are on their way from Europe to join her. Basil (Rush) is a London-based stage actor of enough repute to have earned a knighthood. Dorothy (Davis) is a princess of some French-speaking outpost, married name de Lascabanes, who's impending divorce will leave her with a title but no assets.

They're both purposely late and care most demonstratively for their inheritance. They have all the hallmarks of success and don't know how to live without them. They struggle to flip a steak or feel real love. They call everyone, including their mother, "darling". She calls them her "great disappointments".

The Hunter family may be shallow people, but White and Schepisi have found depth enough in them to make you mourn for the tragedy of their misspent lives. Their emotional journeys are contrasted and elucidated by those of other characters who have become interwoven with them, especially comely nurse Flora (Alexandra Schepisi), who sees her affair with Basil as her ticket out of dullsville; housekeeper Lotte (Helen Morse), who will suffer for Elizabeth's pleasure; and Arnold (John Gaden) and Lal (Robyn Nevin), a couple who's lifelong employment/friendship with the Hunters has brought them few rewards.

In Australia, we've come to think we're all part of the aspirational class. And perhaps mostly we are Floras: we all want to get famous or have Geoffrey Rush's babies. But it's a rare Australian story that even acknowledges the existence of different classes in our society, let alone so thoroughly excavates the effects of privilege or dares to sympathise with the indecently rich. To have done it with so much fun is what makes Eye of the Storm truly worth seeing.