Starring: Rebecca Breeds, Adelaide Clemens, Erik Thomson, Joel Jackson and Louis Henbest
Distributor: Maslow Entertainment
Runtime: 116 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone MSC
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A struggling Hollywood actress returns home to Kangaroo Island, confronting the love triangle that tore her family apart.
Kangaroo Island, South Australia, with its strong local community, as well as being a scenic attraction for tourists, is a strong setting for this Australian drama. The drama centres around family, relationships, ambitions, betrayals, and many personal challenges. And the scenery looks magnificent.
As a film, Kangaroo Island makes an impact. While the story is universal and could take place anywhere, it reminds us that Australian audiences want to see Australian stories, characters they can identify with, and events and themes that may not be part of their family experience, but are part of families they know.
The focus is on Lou, a telling performance by Breeds. The film opens with her, in her 30s in Los Angeles, drained and depressed. She is a character in a popular TV series but the producers are dissatisfied with her performance. And she has broken with her boyfriend. Her father has bought her a plane ticket home. She is hostile.
Through a series of unexpected events, she finds herself on the plane and back home. As she travels, flashbacks begin, building up the portrait of the family, a strong bond with her sister, Freya (Clemens), their stern father (Thomson), surfers, Ben and Todd (Jackson and Henbest). We learn of possible romances, Lou’s going to the US, Freya marrying Ben and having a family.
With the flashbacks, the film builds emotional tension in all the relationships, enabling us to share in the challenges of the present – Lou settling back home, or not, Freya becoming a devout evangelical Christian, her two polite sons, marriage tensions, financial tensions, and the state of health of their father.
One of the great strengths of the screenplay, written by director Piper’s wife, Sally Gifford, is that every few minutes a new angle, a new piece of information is introduced, credibly, but continually altering the audience perspectives on each of the characters and what is going on. In fact, this continues until the sudden comic/serious moments at the end between the two sisters. The narrative is continually moving, interesting developments, serious dialogue, in fact, science, religion, creation, the presence and absence of God, suffering, churchgoing, illness and the question of assisted suicide, law and morality. They are well integrated into the narrative.
Kangaroo Island shows how important local content is and how, if it is well done as here, it can make an impact for local audiences.
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