Two generations of the Aussie Otto acting dynasty talk to Russell Baillie about how their careers intersected on the offbeat romance South Solitary.
On screen they are uncle and niece, George and Meredith. It's 1927 and he pair has arrived on the tiny windswept island of South Solitary, somewhere far over the horizon from mainland Australia. They are there to join the tiny community which serve the isle's only purpose - a lighthouse.
Offscreen they are father and daughter, Barry and Miranda Otto.
Between them they have enough history to be considered an institution of Australian theatre, film and television. Barry has long been a stalwart of the Australian big screen, his roles stretching back to before his lead in the 1985 adaptation of Peter Carey's Bliss, through to being one of the Ocker owl voices in the new animated fantasy Legend of the Guardians.
Miranda's career went international after her unnerving performance in the 1996 acclaimed black comedy Love Serenade - her first film with South Solitary director Shirley Barrett. And that's included a fair amount of time in New Zealand on films both big (she was Eowyn in The Return of the King) and small (2004's In My Father's Den).
Interviewed together on the phone from Sydney, the pair laugh when TimeOut suggests that South Solitary could almost be a New Zealand movie - and not just because it's got expatriate Marton Csokas among its small cast.
There's that name for a start, plus the fact it's set on a wave-lashed rock where sheep seem to outnumber the human population who are given to much brooding.
"Yes it's your sort of film isn't it?" says Barry. "This coast where we were is jagged and kind of scary. The ocean was magnificent and the haulage up that cliff could give you vertigo."
Or, as we call it on this side of the Tasman, "a resort".
"Yes, it has great beauty too. You feel very vulnerable in that environment because there is something very primitive about that coast there."
Having become fascinated with the archives of the old Commonwealth Lighthouse Service, Barrett originally wanted to shoot on the southernmost island of Maatsuyker off the coast of Tasmania. But the production nightmare of a location that could only be reached by helicopter meant the shoot shifted to Cape Nelson and Cape Otway on the coast of Victoria.
Her bittersweet film's focus is Meredith, a plucky 30-something gal who's been taken under the wing of her only relative, stern head lighthouse keeper Uncle George who thinks their stint on South Solitary will be just the thing to keep her out of the sort of trouble she's got herself into in the past.
But her attempts to make friends with the two lighthouse keepers already stationed there (one with his family ) only upsets things. And then Uncle George takes a turn for the worse ... .
"The hardest thing for me was seeing Dad lying sick on the bed and he was lying there in between takes as you tend to do. It was disconcerting to see him lying there looking so ill," says Miranda, "Those death rattles - they were great."
The film, they say, is essentially a romance. Just not an ordinary one.
"It's a romance about the search for love and companionship but along the way there is a lot of left-of-centre humour and it gets funny when you least expect it to be funny," says Miranda.
"It's with five characters in a desolate environment. It makes for a very, very different Australian film with a unique story and a lovely period feel about it," adds Barry.
The pair have acted together before. This time, they say, the fraught relationship of George and Meredith made for an interesting dynamic in their performances.
Says Barry: "Miranda is playing Meredith who is nothing like Miranda and I am playing someone who is nothing really like me. It would throw me a couple of times - I would look straight into Miranda's eyes and think 'My God. I know those eyes. That's Miranda', while I am also thinking, 'this is Meredith, this is Meredith who I am talking to and being cruel to'."
Miranda: "I was thinking 'bring it on. Be more cruel. Be as cruel as you like'.
"It's fun to be playing out something that is quite different. There are a couple of things we have done in the past that were a little closer to our own relationship which is harder and more confronting. So it's much easier to play things that are nothing like your relationship. What was great working on this is just Dad's sense of joy and enthusiasm with everything he does. Sometimes I can be slightly more serious about stuff and joy is a great part of this job."
Barry and actress wife Lindsay separated in the early 70s a few years after Miranda was born. But her time spent on weekends and holidays with her father helped inspire her to join the family business. And soon she was juggling school and screen commitments.
"Me at her age, I wasn't even an actor then. I just couldn't believe what Miranda was accomplishing. She's got the beauty she's got the works," he says after rattling off almost everything in which Miranda has appeared, prompting his daughter to interrupt: "You remember my career better than I do."
There was a point, laughs Barry, when Miranda stopped being "daughter-of" and he started being "father-of" instead.
"Yeah, there's a moment when Miranda became to me, apart from my daughter, Miranda the actress. Because I had been acting for a long time, Miranda was up there with me and finally eclipsed me. It was all happening really quickly, she was working internationally , and I really wanted that for Miranda.
"I talked to her early on about the industry and the chances in the theatre and the film industry being small here - you couldn't expect to be doing five films a year.
"So I wanted Miranda to go out into the great ocean of film and into the world and take on those big challenges. I knew she was up for it."
LOWDOWN
Who: Miranda and Barry Otto, father and daughter Australian acting institution
What: South Solitary by director Shirley Barrett, set on an isolated lighthouse island in the 1920s
When and where: Screening at cinemas now
-TimeOut