LIGHT BETWEEN TWO OCEANS (joint-production Australia, NZ, USA, UK)

 I had never heard of this 2016 movie when I saw it by chance in early 2022. The first hint it may have an Australian connection was the appearance of one of the country's most iconic actors, Jack Thompson, followed shortly after by another, Bryan Brown. The star was the lead male actor, Michael Fassbender, who I am ashamed to say I had never heard of either until this week. What a standout actor he is, and he is at his best in this role as a lighthouse keeper who rescues a baby girl adrift with her dead father in a rowing boat and allows his wife to keep her, against his better judgement.

Right from the start I was put off by the actress playing the lead female role of the wife of the lighthouse keeper. Together the couple just did not fit. She looked young enough to be his daughter from the start. And wore expensive-looking clothes not normally expected to belong to, or be worn by, a lowly lighthouse keeper's wife. That casting mismatch ruined the whole film for me. 

Spectacular scenery. I kept trying to work out where it was which served as another distraction from the narrative. It is ostensibly on the tip of Western Australia, beneath Albany, where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean at Cape Leeuwin. There seems to have been some connection with its lighthouse in the story - its closest town is also Albany - but it does not appear to be the actual location.  

The child's dead father was German, and in real life there was an assistant lighthouse keeper at Cape Leuwin who was German and run out of town for seducing the innkeeper's young daughter. There is a fictional lighthouse in this spot called the Janus Light on the fictional Janus Rock. 

It was hard to see the credits at the end, but it seemed the location of the lighthouse could have possibly been in Tasmania or New Zealand. 

It is a great pity that these two distractions - the location of the lighthouse and the miscasting of the leading lady - spoiled my ability to become fully engrossed in the film. But the superb acting of Michael Fassbender still manged to break through and leave its indelible mark on my heart and mind. 

Postscript: Filming locations were in Australia and New Zealand. The main one was the Cape Campbell Lighthouse in Marlborough, NZ.