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Film: Eye of the Storm (2011)

Cast includes: Goeffrey Rush (The King’s Speech), Charlotte Rampling (Swimming Pool), Judy Davis (To Rome with Love)
Director: Fred Schepisi (Last Orders)
Writers: Judy Morris (Happy Feet), novel by Patrick White
Genre: Drama (119 minutes)

“My mother believes that being of a certain class entitles you to die whenever you damn well please.” “Have the kids arrived?” asks Elizabeth from her deathbed. Elizabeth’s eyesight is failing, but she smells the rain. “It was pissing down the last time I was in Sidney,” says Basil as he looks out his hotel window. On his way out, he tells them, “I’m not here. If they ask, my flight was delayed.” It seems that the only thing keeping Mommy alive is the anticipation if seeing her son Basil again. When her daughter Dorothy (aka, Princess de Lascabanes) arrives from Paris, the disappointment is palpable. “Where’s Basil?” Elizabeth does liven up a bit at the mention of her doctor… “the kind of man I might have enjoyed as a lover” she muses. “So like Mother to summon us here.” Obviously, they wouldn’t have returned otherwise. “Would you be terribly cross with me if I didn’t die?” Mommy asks Dorothy.

“Mother’s not well…. We’ve always been very close,” Basil tells friends. It seems that Basil is planning to turn his life’s story into his next theatrical production in London. So it’s not surprising that he eventually greets his mother with such dramatic flare… “Darling, what a homecoming!” Apparently, Elizabeth has not really followed her son’s career. “If you weren’t any good, it would break my heart,” she explains. But if he weren’t any good, they wouldn’t have knighted him. “But that was before your King Lear,” Elizabeth points out. Ouch! That doesn’t stop Sir Basil from flirting with Mommy’s nurses. But as a lover, Basil can’t hold a candle to his mother… quite the “frisky filly” in her day. When Dorothy and Basil later meet with the lawyer, they’re concerned about the practicality of “such an elaborate apparatus to maintain someone with such diminished quality of life.” (That’s code for putting the old gal in a home and preserving their inheritance.) Besides, Mommy seems to be giving away expensive jewelry to the help. Sir Basil and the Princess… “Mommy’s two great disappointments…” certainly don’t object to the checks Elizabeth has left for them.

It’s obvious that Mommy has the kids on “very short leashes.” As frail as she is, she has all of those in her “elaborate apparatus” on short leashes. Through periods of morphine fog, we revisit some of Elizabeth’s memorable moments… one in particular may explain her daughter’s considerable resentment. The ethereal and meandering narrative is often a reveal of complex back-stories. In the meantime, the gorgeous recreation of 1972 Australia is a treat for the eyes and the performances are excellent. Many of the details are quite subtle, but since Basil is attempting to turn this into a biographical drama, his occasional narration helps focus the story line. “The knight and princess return to the foreign shores of their homeland. How could they not disappoint?”

3 popped kernels

Ethereal and complex story about a dying mother’s hold over her disappointing middle-age children

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