Dir Jocelyn Moorhouse
Kate Winslet’s always a refreshing prospect, but she has an uphill struggle in this tone-deaf tragicomedy, gracefully presiding over broad slapstick, misjudged tragedy and strangely sentimental violence. If I didn’t know about the novel, I’d have thought the story of a 1950s couturier, returning to a small Australian town to solve a murder, came out of a comic book – grotesque characters gibber and pout, emotions run high, but nothing makes very much sense. On the other hand, if you like a bit of camp, you might have fun with the sequences bringing high fashion to the bush, and cinema’s fastest ever recovery from amnesia.