Summary
Rich white people have a lot of micro-crises (and a couple of major ones) – enough to string together a whole season of soap.
For those of you not familiar with the area, Palm Beach is part of the northern beaches of New South Wales. The affluent area, known as “Palmy” apparently, is known for two things: the Home and Away backdrops and rich people. Rachel Ward’s PALM BEACH focuses on the latter.
To mark his birthday, Frank (Bryan Brown) and his wife Charlotte (Greta Scacchi) throw a multi-day event at their fancy Palm Beach home. Gathering Frank’s old bandmates together for the first time in years – including Leo (Sam Neill) and Billy (Richard E. Grant) – old tensions and secrets start to emerge.
Kind of The Big Chill for the Antipodes, PALM BEACH takes its sweet time to get where its going. Aspirational nostalgia porn for the privileged (predominantly white) Boomer set, it’s the kind of drama you get when the core audience hasn’t had to deal with anything more confronting than how much of their money they will spend on decanting white wine.
This Australian all-star cast is an enviable line-up, although most of them are running the basic plays of the slight set-up. Built around a series of micro-crises – from the positioning of a chimney to the relationship woes of the “young” couple (Claire van der Boom and Aaron Jeffery) – the major crisis concerns the questionable parentage of Charlotte’s son (Charlie Vickers). Jacqueline McKenzie, on the other hand, barely gets to do anything beyond dancing around in the background.
As the major crisis is resolved thanks to a deus ex machina of sorts, the slow build-up means its all much ado about nothing. Feeling like several seasons of a soap opera strung together, one’s appreciation of PALM BEACH will ultimately depend on how much you relate to the players. So former rock bands with properties worth seven figures should be fine.
2019 | Australia | DIRECTOR: Rachel Ward | WRITERS: Joanna Murray-Smith, Rachel Ward | CAST: Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, Greta Scacchi, Frances Berry, Ryan Bown | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 8 August 2019 (AUS)
