NOW SHOWING

MOVIE: Wildlife

STARRING: Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ed Oxenbould, Bill Camp.

RATING: M

DIRECTOR: Paul Dano

REVIEWER: Leigh Paatsch

Wildlife is a beautifully acted and directed depiction of a marriage crumbling to bits.

At the heart of the movie, an unsettling domestic drama about a marriage slowly falling apart, is a scenario which can only go one of two ways.

Will someone be there at the end to pick up the pieces?

Or will someone else sweep them under the carpet as if it all never happened?

The year is 1960, just as Jerry Brinson (Jake Gyllenhaal), his wife Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) and their teenage son Joe (Australia’s Ed Oxenbould) have arrived to a new home in Montana’s mountain country.

They are a tough-to-read trio, as we can’t quite tell whether they have moved there in the hope of making a fresh start, or are forlornly giving everything one last shot.

Once the immature and emotionally stunted Jerry loses his job as a golf pro and nicks off to become a firefighter, it is left to the dissatisfied and repressed Jeanette to decide what will become of this fragile family unit.

Wildlife is now showing at selected cinemas around Australia.