"They printed the reviews of your King Lear in the Sydney papers..." — mum Rampling to son Rush (real life version).
In two sittings. This is an adaptation of a Patrick White novel, and is almost entirely a bust. Perhaps it might work on the page, given White's facility with language and artifice, but definitely not on the screen.
The stars are Australian matriarch Charlotte Rampling, daughter Judy Davis (an insecure made Parisian princess), son Geoffrey Rush (a London thespian of some stripe). Robyn Nevin. Helen Morse. Colin Friels turns in an all-ocker effort as the 1972-will-to-power Whitlam/Hawke "Athol Shreve". Nurse Alexandra Schepisi (daughter of director Fred Schepisi) is a (naive?) cultureless social climber, who initially doesn’t like being called on it but realises after she is thwarted that she belongs with her familiar working-class milieu. Rush utters a "yum" in her direction; somehow the ladies slaver over him. Go figure. The plot boils down to the kids returning to Sydney with expectations of imminently receiving their inheritance from their diminishing but still domineering mother. I get the impression that Rampling falls off the throne in a similar manner to White's own mum. The concerns are his usual preoccupations: death, sex, social class, social mores. The obvious point of comparison (beyond King Lear) is Magnolia (this came after, White's novel before): Tom Cruise's "respect the cock" is a lot more powerful than twee observations about the word "penis", and so forth. The settings show a now-deceased old new-money Sydney that might just be zombie-shuffling to the races even now.
This was a bit of a dry run: Sydney Theatre Company is putting on A Cheery Soul soon and I wonder if it's worth going to. The synopsis sounds sketchy.
Manohla Dargis. Jim Schembri. Jake Wilson: the novel got boiled down to a soap opera.