Limbo review: Ivan Sen’s stripped back outback noir

Simon Baker is definitely in the middle of a creative renaissance and his latest film is a stunningly photographed and raw outback noir.

Simon Baker in Ivan Sen’s Limbo. Picture: Bunya Productions

You have to hand it to Simon Baker.

The Australian actor was, at one point, one of the highest paid actors on American TV for his lead role in popular series The Mentalist. When the breezy crime drama ended in 2015, he would’ve had his pick of lucrative US broadcast TV opportunities.

Instead, he came home. Baker returned to Australia and shepherded his passion project, a film adaptation of Tim Winton novel Breath, which he also produced, co-wrote and directed.

Since then, he has flexed his dramatic muscles in some of the best Australian films of the past few years – the visceral colonial story High Ground, artist Del Kathryn Barton’s fantastical debut, Blaze, and now, Ivan Sen’s stunning outback noir, Limbo.

Limbo is a great role for Baker’s creative renaissance, tapping into his thoughtful, quiet energy, his ability to show you a lot without telling you much. And Sen’s sensibilities for the same makes this a perfect marriage of actor and director.

Baker plays a weary police detective named Travis Hardy. Hardy is a former drug squad cop who picked up an unfortunate habit while on the job, and never managed to shake it. He’s sent to a small outback community that feels like a space out of time.

Ivan Sen served as director, writer, producer, cinematographer, editor and composer on Limbo. Picture: Bunya Productions

The town is bordered by abandoned opal mines, the holes of which litter the wide stretches of barren landscape. Presented by Sen (who also served as cinematographer, composer, editor and writer on Limbo) in jawdroppingly beautiful black-and-white, the starkness of the desert has a surprising softness to it, as if you couldn’t possibly hide anything out in the vast open spaces.

But there are secrets in this town, including the disappearance of a young Indigenous woman 20 years earlier. It’s this unsolved case Travis has come to review – or more accurately, he is to review whether it should be reopened.

Sen uses familiar tropes of a crime drama, but he strips them back. There’s a rawness to the beats of Travis revisiting sites, chasing up former suspects and listening to the initial interview tapes. There’s a gravity to it. It feels grounded and unguarded.

Limbo is another chapter in Simon Baker's creative renaissance. Picture: Bunya Productions

Sen positions us in Travis’s perspective, as a haunted outsider delving into the specificities of this community, one which is still hurting from an injustice that’s never been addressed.

The missing woman’s family’s – brother Charlie (Rob Collins) and sister Emma (Natasha Wanganeen) – wounds have never healed. And Charlie in particular have double the pain, having been hauled in by the cops at the time as a suspect in the disappearance.

As Travis is confronted by the many failures of the original investigation, there’s an obvious element that this Indigenous life didn’t hold the same value. As Charlie says, “Nobody ever cares”.

Sen has been in this territory before, exploring the dynamics between law enforcement and Indigenous Australians. Through his work including Mystery Road, Toomelah and now Limbo, Sen, a Gamilaroi man, has continued to press the glaring inequity which exists.

The affecting and exquisite Limbo is another chapter in his masterful, ongoing storytelling journey, and asks if you can find peace without the truth?

Rating: 4/5

Limbo is in cinemas now

Originally published as Limbo review: Ivan Sen’s stripped back outback noir