Mark Reviews Movies: THE DROVER'S WIFE: THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON

The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, Samuel Goldwyn Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 18, 2022

She's alone and pregnant—and due soon—and tending to her other young children in the dusty countryside of Australia, where nature can be cruel and unforgiving. That's how we meet Molly Johnson, a character who's something of an archetype in that country. The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, based on a century-old short story and writer/director/star Leah Purcell's revisionist stage adaptation of that tale, uses our assumptions about this character's circumstances to gradually reveal a story about a different kind of cruelty.

The intentions here are pure and vital, as the filmmaker, making her narrative feature debut, picks apart men's abuse of women, racism against the indigenous people of the country, and a mentality of law and order that doesn't consider the rights of women—or basic matters of right and wrong, for that matter. It's a lot for a relatively simple tale to handle, and some narrative and filmmaking choices on Purcell's part become too much of a distraction from the movie's central point.

In a quietly confident performance, Purcell stars as Molly, the wife of a drover—a shepherd, basically—who is currently on a drive. Near the beginning, she saves her children by shooting a wild bull that has wandered on to the family's property, and cooking some beef brings about a pair of desperate visitors: Nate (Sam Reid), soon to be the chief police officer at a nearby settlement, and his wife Louisa (Jessica De Gouw), an aspiring journalist.

At the end of the couple's stay, Molly sends her children off to stay with a well-to-do woman in the settlement. Shortly after, she receives another unexpected visitor.

He's Yadaka (Rob Collins), an Aboriginal man in shackles. He insists he has been arrested for "being Black," but back at the settlement, Nate is tasked to find the fugitive, who has been accused of murdering the wife and children of the wealthiest man there.

Obviously, none of that accusation is as it seems, and indeed, nothing is quite as it seems with Molly, either. There are a few layers of mystery here—one to do with why Yadaka has been accused, another to do with Molly's heritage, the final to do with the whereabouts of her husband. Details about all of these threads, which have little to do with the in-the-moment drama of Molly's situation, emerge, and much the movie's message-making relies on Nate and Louisa, who debate the differences between law and morality.

Meanwhile, Molly and Yadaka increasingly have to confront the fact that folks really only care about the former, although most of that amounts to a series of standoffs with various outsiders. For all of the big ideas and important arguments that Purcell wants to make with this material, The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson ultimately feels a bit too simplified, as well as too often distracted away from Molly's perspective and experience, to really sell the case it's making.

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