Looking for Grace

Brooks generally is so bewitched by her characters' opacity that they remain frustratingly remote, even in the rare moments when they open up, diminishing the sorrow of the final-act tragedy.

Even as its tone circles back to aching naturalism, there's something tenuous about the pic's tender resolution -- not to mention a teasing sense that more interesting untold stories might lie on the untold fringes.

Brooks' screenplay is wryly funny about human behaviour, keenly observing the awkward ways anxious people rub up against each other.

The main disappointment of Looking for Grace is the finale, which replaces the Altmanesque ensemble style with something reminiscent of Kiéslowski's last works.

The characters depicted are flawed in all sorts of ways, but Brooks's evident sympathy for all of them shines through and the result is an offbeat road movie filled with surprises and revelations.

It is really only when we're with Grace, and when the things that happen are happening to her, that we find any of the grace that Brooks is looking for.

The actors are all strong, with Mitchell and Roxburgh (a long way from TV's Rake) putting in fine performances, and a breakthrough turn from Young, whose elusive Grace holds this subtle saga together.

A tender and bittersweet drama about the vagaries of life and the consequences of our actions.

[Brooks] just wants you to feel for these people. And you do.

With its painterly eye for the parched saltpans and wheat fields bisected by snaking roads, the film has a lonely, elegiac beauty. The unexpected comedy can give way in an instant to something darker, but it's never mean-spirited.

Told in a fractured, non-linear style, with overlapping narratives retelling the story from different perspectives, the parts can be tantilising but the whole doesn't come together the way it should, the payoff being more of a whimper than a bang.

What sometimes shapes as promising about a bitsy tale of an outback search for a missing teen is never quite delivered upon here.