Directed by Rachel Ward. Starring Bryan Brown, Rachel Griffiths, Ben Mendelsohn, Maeve Dermody Club, IFI, Dublin, 90 min

‘A FILM BY Rachel Ward.” There are five words you never expected to see in these review pages.

As it happens, the star of The Thorn Birdshas been working behind the camera for about a decade, and her debut feature turns out to be a certified Australian indie scenery- chewer. Are Bryan Brown and Rachel Griffiths on board? They are. Does the soundtrack echo with sensitive plucked strings? It does. Is the screenplay concerned with ghastly family secrets? It is.

Cynicism aside, Ward has delivered a strongly acted, creepily compelling, though not particularly innovative saga that bears comparison with recent Australian dramas such as Little Fishand Jindabyne. Based on a novel by Newton Thornburg, Beautiful Katestars Ben Mendelsohn as an errant son making his way home to his dying father (Brown) and his long- suffering sister (Griffiths).

There is something of Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youthin the family dynamics.

A failed right-wing politician, Brown’s pater familias despises those who oppose him and disrespects those who indulge him. As in most of Williams’s pieces, the final revelations are as unsettling as they are brow- dampeningly melodramatic. But Ward manages to coat the tragedy in enough outback grit to conceal its rampaging preposterousness. A promising career shift from Ms W.