Dir. Nadia Tass, Australia, 2010, 103 mins
Cast: Jacinda Barrett, Richard Roxburgh, James Nesbitt, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Review by Carol Allen
Australian director/producer team Nadia Tass and David Parker were the makers of the delightfully quirky films Malcolm (1986) and Mr Reliable (1996), both starring Colin Friels, who has a supporting role in Matching Jack. This latest movie, which goes straight to DVD in the UK, lacks the peculiarly Australian quality that made those earlier two films so refreshing, but it’s a well made and watchable tear jerker.
Marisa and David (Barrett and Roxburgh) have an apparently happy marriage, until the day their son Jack (Tom Russell) is taken into hospital and diagnosed with leukaemia. While trying to track down her husband, who’s away on business, Marisa discovers that he is having an affair and has indeed been unfaithful to her with a series of other women throughout their marriage. While understandably more than somewhat upset by this discovery, when Jack’s consultant (Friels) tells them that Jack’s only hope of survival is for them to find a matching bone marrow donor, most likely to be a sibling, Marisa starts going through David’s diaries and tracking down his ex lovers in the hope that one of them has borne him a child, who could save her son’s life. At the same time Marisa finds herself drawn into a love affair herself with Connor (Nesbitt), whose son Finn (Smit-McPhee) is in the hospital bed next to Jack and the two boys have become friends.
This Irish father and son have been sailing the world together before landing in Australia and the character of Connor and his relationship with Finn is somewhat overloaded with Irish whimsy, while Connor’s affair with Marisa, which arises out of their shared situation and mutual need, comes about with somewhat unrealistic speed. And the film does tend to veer at times towards the sentiment and soap.
One element that makes the film worth seeing though is some of the supporting talent, particularly Smit-McPhee as Finn. Now a known young face on the international screen for his roles in The Road and the English language version of Let Me In, Smit-McPhee is an experienced veteran at the age of the age of 15 and his performance in this film is assured and genuinely moving. Two more young Australian talents featured here and who are well worth keeping an eye out for are Yvonne Strahovski as David’s current mistress, who has rather more to her character than the standard marriage breaking floozie and Nicole Gulasekharam as one of Jack’s potential sibling donors.
[cinemabase tt1447499 video_player]
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