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Showbiz mum returning to the stage finds angst in her disjointed family.
Dysfunctional families have been a rich vein for movies around the world.
Australia's dabbling into the scene has had mixed results.
In recent times, Ray Lawrence's Lantana was one of the most successful in its style, theme, artistic and box-office success. Last year, his Jindabyne was not as successful but it was a gallant, complex and rewarding effort.
But director Cherie Nolan and writer Keith Thompson have hit the jackpot with their perceptive and bitter-sweet account of an ambitious British mother trying to resurrect her showbiz career 25 years after marrying an Aussie singer and raising two sons.
It's a role Brenda Blethyn was born to play (as she was with Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies) and she relishes every crisp line, twist and emotional peg on which her character continually stumps her toe.
Thompson wrote it with Blethyn in mind and she commands the screen with a characterisation of immense complexity combining her ambition, resentment and mother love.
She is given wonderful support from three young Australian actors, Khan Chittenden, Emma Booth and Richard Wilson.
Chittenden has the vital role of Jean's virginal, shy, 21-year-old son, Tim, of whom Jean is most protective. Wilson is Tim's disabled brother, Mark, and Booth is Jill, the forthright girl who challenges Jean for Tim's love and affection.
Jean has divorced John (Frankie J. Holden), now a security guard also seeking a return to fame as a country-music singer. When Jean married him she was on the way up as a comedian in Britain.
She works in a cafeteria but at night does stand-up comedy in clubs with a saucy style of nudge-nudge, wink-wink dated comedy.
The story is a three-hander with Jean's ambition clashing with her mother love, Tim's confusion and reluctance to commit with sexually forward Jill, and Mark's struggle to find another love than his mother's, and aware of his mental limitations.
The cross pollination of these characters, with a terrific turn by Holden, as John, melds into a bitter-sweet story often warmly humourous and touching and tinged with a reality that can be understood and shared.
"Apology solves everything, even if you're not wrong,'' he tells Tim.
Premiered at this year's Adelaide Film Festival, it is one of several Australian films about to be released - a mini-renaissance which reflects wonderful slices of life about who we are and our motivations.
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