This is an exceptional film - disturbing but not offensive. Ward has a tight touch on a controversial topic. Sophie Lowe is an amazing new talent but the 'knowns' like Mendelsohn and Griffiths as well as the newcomers complement each other in a subtle morality tale. Even Bryan Brown isn't his usual annoying 'ocker' self in what is probably the role of his life.

Beautiful.

In this banner year of Aussie films, BK is a stand-out, however, its subject matter is demanding. With a beautiful but crass girlfriend in tow, a brooding Ned Kendall (Ben Mendelsohn) reluctantly returns home somewhere in the remote Flinders Ranges to bid farewell to his dying and spiteful widower father (Bryan Brown). The mood is tense, relationships strained and the dysfunctional family situation gets darker as a series of sexually loaded flashbacks pack one emotional layer upon another. Director Rachel Ward takes viewers on a powerfully poignant journey into kindred blackness and then, abruptly, into resolution’s sunlight. The cast including Rachel Griffiths and Sophie Lowe as Ned’s sisters, commonsense Sally, and spirited Kate, give inspiring performances.

It takes a while to figure out what this movie is actually about. It's not about the difficult relationship a 40 year old struggles to keep on even keel with a feisty, self-absorbed, wilful beauty half his age, although that is fun to watch. It's actually about what happened in the past, told through increasingly longer and more meaningful flashbacks. Absorbing stuff in a good Aussie movie. Harsh Australian landscape seems like a character in the story.