The Boys Are Back

A family film set in Australia. Joe is a sportswriter. He came from England, lives in South Australia, and is constantly on the road. His wife falls ill. The cancer moves fast and she dies. A six-year-old boy is left. Artie is alone with his father. Joe does not know how to raise a child. His wife had been doing it for years. He makes a rule: yes to everything in the house. From there the film watches the consequences of that rule. The dishes pile up, the house falls apart, there is no routine around meals, and both of them look happy. Then one more person arrives. Harry is his son from a first marriage; fifteen, and he has lived in England with his mother for years. They become three. Harry does not know his father. The man had left him and it has never been discussed. What the narrative is interested in is not mourning but incompetence: its idea is that good intentions are not enough on their own, and that the order the father built exists to postpone his own grief. One incident breaks everything. Joe leaves the children alone for a day and comes back to a different picture. The narrative does not make the resolution easy. Nobody becomes a good parent all at once. The source is Simon Carr's own memoir; Carr was a sportswriter too and the book is called The Boys Are Back in Town. It was filmed in South Australia, on the coast and inland, and the landscape is an important part of the narrative. Clive Owen, Laura Fraser, Emma Booth, George MacKay and Nicholas McAnulty are in the cast. Scott Hicks directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet family drama and Australian landscape. Who it is not for: anyone looking for something new; the narrative takes a familiar road and plays too safe in its emotional moments.