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Alternately tough, desperate and vulnerable, Cate Blanchett contributes a deeply moving portrayal to this consistently disconcerting Sydney-based drama about a reformed junkie’s fraught bid to put her life back on track. She’s ably supported by Noni Hazlehurst, as her over-protective mother, and Hugo Weaving, as her bisexual stepfather, who relies on heroin provided by retiring gangster Sam Neill to cope with losing the fame he once enjoyed as a rugby league star. But while director Rowan Woods makes evocative use of the city’s Little Saigon neighbourhood, he fails to integrate the drug deal subplot involving Blanchett’s disabled brother, Martin Henderson, and her Vietnamese ex-boyfriend, Dustin Nguyen. Consequently, this sombre study of wounded courage and misplaced affection ends on an anti-climactic contrivance.
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