The star of South Solitary, an Australian film by director Shirley Barrett that zapped across our cinema screens for scant weeks, is its setting, a lighthouse on a bleak, remote island. Cinematographer Anna Howard captures the austere scenery and interior of the evocative lighthouse with great aplomb; it helped that I’d recently seen one of the two locations, Cape Otway on the southwest coast of Victoria. The storyline is simple, if not slow: Meredith, a young, hesitant woman (played with wonderful subtlety by Miranda Otto) with some kind of secret past, arrives by boat, accompanying her uncle, the new lighthouse keeper (a fine performance by Barry Otto). Meredith becomes entangled in the lives of the other two lighthouse workers, a slick Casanova and his family, and a World War I wreck (the real star of the film, played with aching empathy by Marton Csokas). Since not much really happens, I won’t reveal more, but suffice to say there is tragedy, isolation, danger and a whiff of love. Barrett’s direction is languorous but my usual impatience was conquered by the mix of setting and gentle character development.
South Solitary is, in its own minor way, a sumptuous treat. 3 stars.