A Rich, Sensitive ‘Echo’ of Family Life in the Outback

“The Echo of Thunder,” a celebration of family that airs Sunday on CBS, is unexpectedly multilayered and bittersweet, due largely to director Simon Wincer’s understated approach and a subtle, resonant performance by Judy Davis.

The film--based on Libby Hathorn’s Australian novel “Thunderwith” and written for television by H. Haden Yelin--is about a teenage city girl who becomes an uneasy addition to a struggling farm family in the Australian outback. (Filmed on location, the contrasting vistas of red earth, blue sky, vast ocean, rocky tors and hard-won green growth are stunning.)

Lara (Lauren Hewett), the child of her father’s newly deceased first wife, is particularly unwelcome to her stepmother, Gladwyn (Davis), an emotionally guarded woman seemingly as unyielding as the difficult land the family farms. The only solace Lara finds is in a roving dingo she befriends, and in the sunny affection freely offered by one young half-sister, Opal (irresistible sprite Emily Jane Browning).

Welcomed by her father (a warm Jamey Sheridan), Lara is bereft of his protective presence when business takes him away from home and her tribulations mount up--her oldest half-sister’s hostility, a threatening bully, receiving no sympathy for either the loss of her mother or her unfamiliarity with farm work. Still, this is no Cinderella/wicked stepmother tale.

True, a happy ending isn’t difficult to predict, but before it comes, life is difficult for all concerned, physically and emotionally. Wincer avoids bathos, however. Lara suffers, but grows stronger; Davis, meanwhile, gradually brings to light the reasons for Gladwyn’s antipathy, why she rigidly armors herself against vulnerability and fear.

Davis, sinewy and tough, all sharp angles and meagerly rationed smiles, is a class act as she reveals Gladwyn in small moments--the way that, unobserved, she holds her youngest child; flickers of mirth and tenderness, and, most eloquently, her single, unguarded skipping step when she receives a letter from her absent husband.

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* “The Echo of Thunder” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS (Channel 2). The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).