#meredith appleton

I definitely went into this movie thinking it was a cute little story about a girl, her lamb, and her stern uncle. Boy, was I wrong!

Miranda Otto plays Meredith Appleton, the niece of George (played be her real-life father, Barry Otto). I’m going to use Miranda and Barry’s names instead of their character names, because that’s just easier to understand, I think, but please know I’m talking about the characters they play, not they themselves.

So, Barry and Miranda are sent to the South Solitary island because the Head Lighthouse Keeper committed suicide, and the lighthouse needed a new person in charge. Barry is incredibly strict and often rude, but I suppose that’s understandable, at least when it comes to how he treats his staff, considering the state they find the lighthouse management in.

Miranda’s character seems incredibly precious, shy, demure, and completely unfit for the rough life of living on a craggy rock with only a few other people for company. At the start, there are six other people on the island: the Stanley family, which consists of Henry Stanley (a rogue if there ever was one), Alma, his rough and sharp-tongued wife (played by Essie Davis), and their three children... and then the brooding, PTSD-plagued war-veteran, Jack Fleet.

There are some pretty upsetting subjects discussed in this movie, not the least of which being an extremely blunt conversation between Miranda and Essie Davis, in which Essie Davis’ character presses Miranda for intimate details about why she isn’t married yet, and hasn’t had any kids. 

Miranda reveals that she can’t have children, because an operation went wrong (it’s implied that she had an abortion, based on Essie asking, “you were up the pipe?”), and she was forced to have a hysterectomy as a result. She says the child was conceived with a married man (which I’m extremely confused about, because I thought the man involved would’ve been her so-called fiancé...?) and it’s very odd that they just drop that fact into the story, because it seems extremely out of character for Meredith, as we know her currently... and yet, it becomes a fundamental characterization, as she later goes on to sleep with a married man again, and defends how poorly her uncle treats her by insisting that he was the only one who would take her in after the (implied) abortion. 

Essie Davis is unsympathetic to Miranda’s sad backstory, and never warms up to Miranda’s character... so the opportunity for female friendship was sadly missed in this film. They are pretty much enemies from start to finish.

There’s also a subplot where Miranda tries to get to know the youngest child, Netty, but the girl is very hard to read. You can tell she’s had a rough life, and doesn’t suffer fools. Their “friendship” barely develops before Netty fails to care for Miranda’s sheep, and they have a falling out.

Also, there is an ambiguously rape-y, dubiously consensual scene where Henry attempts to seduce Miranda, and is... apparently successful? I feel very strongly that her multiple polite refusals of his advances ought to have indicated to the man that he should leave her alone. She seems incredibly naïve, innocent, and virginal in this scene (which is odd, considering she’s apparently had an affair with a married man before...?!). He’s pretty open about being attracted to her for a good portion of the scene, so Miranda’s polite rebuffs shouldn’t have been taken as consent---as in, he took the fact that she didn’t throw him out of her cottage at the first warning sign as “leading him on.”

To that point, she literally says, “I’m sorry if I’ve led you on,” and he says she hasn’t, and then like one minute later, when she insists she hadn’t noticed that he was interested in her, he acts surprised and goes: “well now you really are leading me on.”

When it becomes clear he’s about to kiss her, she gets this incredibly frightened look on her face, and says, “oh! there’s the milk boiling!” clearly intending to run away from him and tend to the stove, but he forces her to kiss him... and then the scene cuts to black, leaving me very concerned that he raped her.

We see them alone together two more times, one where he forces another kiss on her in the light house, and then another where it’s just a straight-up sex scene. I hate the angle they took the sex scene from, because it looks like Miranda’s body is in an extremely uncomfortable position as he pounds into her. It definitely doesn’t read as a romantic coupling, that’s for sure. 

I guess we’re meant to believe that she warmed up to him sometime between him forcing himself on her in the kitchen and them having sex in her bed days later...?

(I hate it.)

Anyway, Essie Davis finds out about the affair, and makes the whole family leave the island. This leaves only three people left: Miranda, Barry, and the war-veteran, Jack, who has frequent PTSD episodes and really shouldn’t be a lighthouse keeper at all. 

Also, Barry is PISSED when he finds out about Miranda’s affair, and there’s a lot of slut-shaming and victim-blaming that goes on, right before he just randomly... dies? I definitely didn’t see that coming. So he dies while still extremely disappointed in Miranda, and I just hate that, because her character seems fixated on what others think of her. His displeasure with her in his final hours definitely left a wound in her heart.

Which then leaves Miranda alone on the island with Jack. Miranda’s character isn’t good at being alone. The rest of the movie is honestly just her trying to get Jack to open up to her, but he doesn’t really. They embroider things together, and he teaches her how to be a lighthouse keeper, but they only barely scratch the surface of each other’s pasts. 

And then a ship arrives to take her home....?!! The end?! But not before she insists she ought to stay, which I found incredibly weird. She barely knows this brooding man, and suddenly she can’t live without him? She doesn’t want to leave him alone, despite the living conditions on the island being impossible for her to endure? It’s very strange.

I had high hopes for this movie, and I do think it’s worth watching, if only for Miranda’s beautiful, moving performance.... but I just sort of don’t know what the point or message of this film was supposed to be...? 

Miranda Otto’s character is treated pretty poorly by everyone on the island. There is very little happiness or humor to balance the darkness of the story.  Most of the moments that are meant to be romantic or sexy are dubiously consensual, so I didn’t find those very enjoyable, and the subplot about her lamb going missing (presumed dead) and then her finding it months later just isn’t that entertaining, if I’m being honest?