15, 126mins
Brad McGann’s impressive film debut, In My Father’s Den, ultimately crumples under the weight of the novel from which he sourced it. But he has a painter’s feel for emotional textures and small moments. Maurice Gee’s tale of a black sheep son who comes home to bury his father on South Island, New Zealand, offers Matthew MacFadyen his most rewarding role on screen.
He clings to the part of Paul like a drowning man. Seventeen years as a successful photo-journalist in the world’s bleakest war zones has turned him into a newspaper celebrity and a total stranger. He lurches around his old haunts like a ghost. His brother (Colin Moy) seethes with resentment: Paul turned on his heel as a teenager, and left his family for dead.
His arrival opens familiar wounds. The girlfriend he deserted is married with a 16-year-old daughter. The locals are suspicious of his “pommy” accent. And his friendship with a teenage girl, Celia, fecklessly played by Emily Barclay, looks downright spooky.
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The film is an open-ended tease until old pictures are discovered in scrapbooks, and ugly pasts are dug up. It’s easy to understand why the teenage Paul left this simmering hotbed of incest and tragedy. Why he stays is another matter entirely. The film duly gets stuck in a bottleneck of soap opera revelations, and the rhythm and realism stalls.