The power of love
The sky is mid-winter blue. Sunlight fractures in shards across the inky Pacific. High on a cliff top, in a razor-sharp breeze, half a dozen actors clink glasses, make languid conversation and evoke the illusion of summer on the set of Rachel Ward’s new feature, Palm Beach. Old friends Sam Neill, Greta Scacchi and Richard E Grant are here, along with new friends Jacqueline McKenzie, Heather Mitchell and Claire van der Boom, as well as Rachel’s husband of 35 years, Bryan Brown, and their daughter, Matilda.
Rachel calls action and for the most part calls the shots. The only slightly meddlesome one is Bryan, who disputes the need for his character to shed tears in this scene. She indulges his spirited mansplaining with goddesslike calm.
Later, she confesses: “I respect that’s something he wants to say but I do wish he didn’t want to say it now. Could he not have said it yesterday or over breakfast or two years ago when we were writing this?”
Bryan is lead actor and producer of this friends-and-family venture, an idea he hatched after a house party in Wales. This is neither the couple’s first cinematic joint venture nor their first difference of opinion – not by a long shot.
They shared their first kiss on the set of in 1983 and married months later in Oxfordshire, where Rachel had
