Escaping The Eye of the Storm

I found myself heading fast for the exit door at a recent screening and new release of The Eye of the Storm, escaping as quickly as possible this turgid or perhaps rancid is a better word for it, adaptation of Australia’s Patrick White novel which I will certainly never want to read. (I am a great admirer of his Voss.)

I couldn’t work out at all what the film was about at all except this aged rich floozy, played by Charlotte Rampling, looking as if she’d been left in an I’m a Celebrity Jungle Get Me Out Of Here forever— and was now in bed dying— kept meeting her two awful offspring, one a despicable Australian actor (knighted for services to the arts?—most unlikely) played by Geoffrey Rush, the other a frigid French princess by marriage played by Judy Davis. Al l the characters are stilted self-conscious puppets endowed with thuddingly obvious misery- me lines, unable to evoke a shred of pity or love in one viewer (me).

To underline the down-under connection the frequent sex scenes were loaded with platypussy platitudes, and—alas— I could never detect beneath this posturing, narcissistic slice of upper crust decay any gripping story-line. Where has the Charlotte Rampling of yesteryear gone?

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