It’s been seven years since the once-prolific Bruce Beresford directed a feature. That movie, Ladies in Black (2018) took me by surprise. It was so up-tempo, so cheerful, yet full of keen observations about Australia in the 1950s. Memories of that sparkling effort made me eager to see what Beresford would give us in The Travellers, a film he has written and directed. I’m afraid I broke my own rule that it’s always best to go into the cinema with diminished expectations.
The Travellers is only 97 minutes, a small story that proceeds at a leisurely pace. We realise almost immediately that nothing especially dramatic is going to happen. Beresford has given us a study of character and family dynamics; of that typically Australian dilemma of being torn between one’s affection for this country, and the lure of the wider world. The narrative is patchy and episodic, with a tendency to set up promising scenarios that fizzle into thin air.
The lead character is Luke Bracey’s Stephen Seary, an Australian stage designer who has achieved great success in Europe and America at a relatively young age. We find him returning to his hometown of Yarrabiddy, an imaginary hamlet in the Western Australian countryside, to be with his dying mother.