Kiwi-shot weepy oddly unmoving The Light Between Oceans (M)
132 mins Shot largely in New Zealand and set in early 20th-century Australia, The Light Between Oceans boasts two of today’s most luminous movie stars and a gutwrenching plot involving the desire and failure to have children.
Irish-German Michael Fassbender and Swede Alicia Vikander (who apparently fell in love during filming) sport subtle Antipodean accents as a young couple living in initially happy solitude as lighthouse-keeper and wife, whose parental prayers are answered when a baby quite literally washes up on their shore.
Such a set-up promised a multitissue film, and I went in with girded loins and high expectations of a cathartic weepy. The photography is as sumptuous as the scenery and Alexandre Desplat’s beautiful score evokes The Hours, in style and era. Vikander (this year’s Supporting Oscar-winner for The Danish Girl )is stunning, whether lit by sunrise or sunset, and plays a warm and forthright foil to the typically tacit Fassbender.
But the golden glow starts to fade as we wade through the first act, which gets a bit bogged down by thin backstory and necessary but turgid exposition (it is adapted from a novel, after all). With the burgeoning lovers momentarily separated, we’re stuck with that very bland trope of his love letters being read aloud in voiceover. Finally, when the couple are in situ on their remote island, every shade of melodrama ensues.
Ultimately, while there are moments which catch in one’s throat and all the performances are earnestly committed, director Derek Cianfrance’s (the gutting Blue Valentine and engrossing The Place Beyond the Pines) interpretation is too on-the-nose and transparent in its emotional manipulation to allow you the space to feel.
Although the moral dilemma at its core may provide excellent post-movie debate, by its end The Light Between Oceans is strangely unmoving and the saddest thing about it was leaving the cinema with that packet of tissues intact. – Sarah Watt