REVIEW: Aussie film The Butterfly Tree keeps going out on a limb but never spreads its wings

REVIEW: The Butterfly Tree is a new Australian film that is eye-catching and head-scratching in equal measure. Some inspired visual flair is let down by inelegant, garbled scripting.

THE BUTTERFLY TREE (M)

Rating: two and a half stars (2.5 out of 5)

Director: Priscilla Cameron (feature debut)

Starring: Melissa George, Ed Oxenbould, Ewen Leslie, Sophie Lowe.

Flawed of the wings

Eye-catching and head-scratching in equal measure, the uneven Australian drama The Butterfly Tree will seriously struggle to find any kind of audience during its limited run in cinemas.

A bit of a shame, really, as the movie’s restless desire to paintball the screen with vividly hued and intriguingly composed visual ideas does impress at times.

Melissa George doesn’t care what anyone says. She loves her some bathtub bandana.

So too do the efforts of a committed cast as they valiantly give voice to a script that is never all that sure about what it really wants to say.

Melissa George stars as Evelyn, a former burlesque dancer who is now making ends meet as a florist in a Queensland town that is also home to teen loner Fin (Ed Oxenbould) and his widower father Al (Ewen Leslie).

Evelyn is one of those alluring eccentrics (she wears vintage clothes! she rollerskates! she changes hairdos every few minutes!) that can only exist in movies.

Just as there are no prizes for guessing this mercurial man-magnet is running from something in her past, unsurprisingly it ain’t long before Fin (bit of a stalker) and Al (bit of a jerk) are both running after her.

And the award for the best set of wheels in a movie this week goes to ... The Butterfly Tree.

The unspoken tensions at work between father and son in The Butterfly Tree are just as interesting as anything Evelyn gets up to, and some better, clearer scripting would have helped puzzled viewers make some sense of them.

Writer-director Priscilla Cameron displays an ambition and assurance you don’t always see in an Australian filmmaker working on their first feature.

Melissa George jumps over a prostrate Ed Oxenbould in The Butterfly Tree. Why? Feel free to make up your reason ...

When The Butterfly Tree’s sumptuous production design, inspired soundtrack choices and quality performances are all working together at the same time, Cameron declares herself a talent that must be closely watched in the future.

If only the story could have lived up to the high standards and interesting choices driving the rest of the movie.