Directed by Fred Schepisi. Starring Charlotte Rampling, Geoffrey Rush, and Judy Davis. Rated 14A.

A heavily theatrical air hangs over The Eye of the Storm, and that’s the best thing about it, since the movie fails as clearly constructed storytelling but succeeds in its love of language and nuanced acting.

It’s an uneven return for veteran Fred Schepisi, who directed such classic Australian titles as The Devil’s Playground and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, as well the B.C.-shot Roxanne. He and screenwriter Judy Morris (who cowrote the first Happy Feet ’toon) attempt to cram in more than can possibly fit of Patrick White’s 1973 novel, which helped net him a Nobel Prize for literature. Frequent voice-overs allow excellent Geoffrey Rush to lift apt prose from the book, which is too much of a good thing but does fit his role as Basil Hunter, a ham actor returning from England to visit his interminably dying mother (Charlotte Rampling).

Also showing up at the upper-crust clan’s ancestral manor, and just as reluctantly, is his sister Dorothy (a slightly overamped Judy Davis), aka the Princess de Lascabanes—that absurd name the only thing left of a loveless marriage into French royalty. Lack of affection, and hunger for it, is the only thing connecting these three selfish souls, with mother dearest still getting the best of everything, even as she declines from an unspecified illness. She has a small corps of attendants, including a dishy nurse (Alexandra Schepisi, the director’s daughter) who sets her sights on Basil—although none of the Hunters are good at giving.

That’s a problem for the audience as well. Two hours is a smidge too long to spend with these long-suffering characters, especially when they are so damnably uncomfortable with each other. It’s Rampling’s movie, though, and Schepisi obviously relished allowing her the room—in darkly cramped quarters or more wild-eyed flashbacks—to mama-lion everyone else into submission.

Watch the trailer for The Eye of the Storm.