She gave them life. She left them nothing but the storm she became.
The Eye of the Storm (2011) is a poignant, darkly satirical Australian drama based on Patrick White’s novel, directed with restrained intensity by Fred Schepisi. Set in 1970s suburban Sydney, the film explores the complexities of family, fading power, and the quiet, often cruel decay of human dignity — all within the grand yet suffocating walls of a dying matriarch’s home.
Elizabeth Hunter (Charlotte Rampling), once a powerful and imperious socialite, now lies bedridden in her mansion, clinging to her withering sense of control. Her estranged children — Basil (Geoffrey Rush), a self-absorbed London stage actor, and Dorothy (Judy Davis), a disgraced European princess — return home not out of love, but in hopes of reclaiming some piece of their mother's legacy before she dies. What follows is a brutal, often darkly humorous portrait of a family unraveling under the weight of resentment, denial, and unspoken history.
Rampling commands the screen with quiet ferocity, playing Elizabeth as a woman whose frailty never quite robs her of dominance. Her children orbit her with both guilt and calculation, revealing a lifetime of emotional debt and spiritual bankruptcy. Rush is simultaneously tragic and pathetic as Basil, a man clinging to artistic ego and unresolved childhood pain. Davis, razor-sharp as always, layers Princess Dorothy with bitterness, vulnerability, and a barely concealed hunger for approval.
Schepisi keeps the film grounded in emotional truth, letting long silences, piercing dialogue, and subtle gestures carry the weight of decades. The lavish home becomes a kind of emotional prison — beautifully decaying, filled with memories and regret. Flashbacks offer glimpses into the glamour and cruelty of the past, giving context to wounds that never healed.
At its core, The Eye of the Storm is about how power — whether maternal, social, or psychological — lingers even after it's lost. It asks how love can coexist with cruelty, and whether forgiveness is possible when affection was always conditional.
