Eddie Pensier writes:

The debut directorial effort by actor Richard Roxburgh, Romulus, My Father (2007) is a grave and beautiful, if flawed, movie based on a real-life memoir.

Romulus Gaita (Eric Bana) is a Yugoslav immigrant to 1960 Australia with a hardworking ethic that he passes on to his son Raimond (the luminously gifted Kodi Smit-McPhee). Unfortunately both of them are in thrall to Rai’s beautiful mother Christina (Franka Potente), who today would probably be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She drops in at the Gaita homestead in rural Victoria at odd intervals for days or weeks at a time, then leaves, to the disappointment of Rai–who craves affection–and Romulus–who loves her despite her issues. After she has a daughter by her new lover Mitru (Russell Dykstra), she plummets into glassy-eyed depression. When she attempts suicide by sleeping-pill overdose, Romulus returns to the home and tells Rai (who has been sleeping on the porch waiting for news), “She’s going to be okay”, and the looks they exchange at that point tells us they both aren’t sure if that’s a blessing or a curse.

Smit-McPhee is just sensational as Rai, who idealizes his parents but is forced to face their human frailties. Bana has few lines but brilliantly communicates the stoic anguish of Romulus, whose new life in a new land isn’t working out how he’d hoped (the eventual toll it takes is shocking to watch). Franka Potente does a good job in making us understand how the monstrously narcissistic Christina could ensnare her men with alluring charm, then alienate them with reckless self-destruction.

Roxburgh and his cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson put some gorgeous images on the screen. It took me a while though, to decide whether the visual palette of bleached-out tans and ivories was soothing and serene or merely boring. (I still can’t pick.) The occasionally stuttering, fragmented pace of the storytelling doesn’t help either. Still, this is a worthy movie with some amazing performances. Seek it out for an interesting, if depressing, diversion.

Related

• The real Raimond Gaita is a novelist, philosopher, and professor of some note.
• Gaita’s memoirs on which the movie is based.