Transmasculine film-maker Harvey Zielinski’s handsomely textured directorial debut deploys the familiar homecoming narrative, whereby a person returns to the small town they grew up in to reconcile with the past. The journey home often – like in The Dry and Beautiful Kate – involves coming to terms with events that cast a long shadow over the protagonist, who is frequently a city slicker greeted with festering local resentments (like in Bruce Beresford’s recent drama The Travellers).
But neither of those things happens to the protagonist of Sweet Milk Lake, Jake (Zielinski), who returns to his home town to see his terminally ill estranged father, Lee (Kieran Darcy-Smith). In fact, Jake is warmly welcomed back, reintroduced to the rituals of small-town Aussie life such as fishing, barbecues, beers, archery and the occasional fistfight at the local pub.
