West of Sunshine

In the modest but sneakily affecting Australian father-son drama "West of Sunshine," your sympathies for a problematic dad come and go in waves, sometimes within the span of a few seconds.

As epitaphs go, it's close to perfect.

Though Thom Neal's photography is at times needlessly jittery, the film offers a convincing visualisation of an urban jungle where its misguided protagonist is constantly making the wrong decisions.

West of Sunshine has the feel of a short stretched to 90 minutes, and stuffed with endless over-scored melodramatic moments, but credit should be given to going against the grain of Australian masculine film history.