Article, Daily Telegraph, Thursday June 19th, 2008

Refugees from a painful past

UNFINISHED SKY (M)
* * *
Director: Peter Duncan
Starring: William McInnes, Monic Hendrickx, David Field and Bille
Brown
Screening: Selected cinemas

The emotional life of widower John Woldring (William McInnes) is about
as parched as the paddocks from which he ekes out a living.

After the premature death of his wife in an accident, the second-generation
farmer is simply going through the motions.

Unfinished Sky, writer-director Peter Duncan's first film since Passion
(1999), opens with a series of visual snapshots that establish
Woldring's fragile state of mind.

The fortysomething loner hauls himself out of bed, performs rudimentary
ablutions, slaps pet food into a bowl and absentmindedly spoons
cereal into his mouth.

The black dog of depression is only partly alleviated by a real canine
companion, the loyal farm dog who follows Woldring wherever
he goes.

Everything changes, however, when a traumatised Afghani refugee Tahmeena
(Monic Hendrickx) stumbles on to his isolated property and
collapses. Caught on the back foot by the wounded interloper, he
involuntarily rejoins the human race, carrying her limp body into
his house.

Aware that something is seriously amiss, he tends to her with little
emotion but all due care and attention until she finally regains
consciousness.

Slowly, carefully, these two damaged souls find common ground, even
without a common language, and eventually fully-fledged romance.

Unfinished Sky has a thriller element twisted through it, too, flashing
back to reveal how Tahmeena came to be in such a predicament.
And revealing a dark underside to rural camaraderie.

This loose remake of the 1998 Dutch hit The Polish Bride, which also
starred Hendrickx, is well-suited to the new landscape into which
it has been transplanted.

There's a timely aspect, too, in the film's oblique reference to Australia's
harsh treatment of illegal refugees.

And McInnes and Hendrickx have just the right balance of controlled
chemistry as the unlikely couple.

An intelligent romantic thriller.
VR