Hugo Weaving and Nicole Kidman in Strangerland (Alchemy)

Having a child go missing is a torment. Catherine and Matthew Parker (Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes) endure double the agony when both of their children wander from home on the same night. The subsequent search doesn’t just test the Parkers’ marriage, it burns all who come in contact with it. The scorching emotions involved match the sun-baked Australian landscape into which the children have vanished.

There were warning signs. Tommy (Nicholas Hamilton), the younger of the two, was already prone to walking through town at night, saying he couldn’t sleep. Meanwhile, teenage Lily (Maddison Brown) is using an Avril Lavigne-inspired sex appeal to rub up against any skater boy who happens to pass by. She has also struck up some kind of relationship with Burtie (Meyne Wyatt), a simpleminded young Aboriginal man who does yard work for the Parkers. By the time Lily disappears, she has left behind a crumb trail of suspects.

Enter Detective David Rae (Hugo Weaving), a quiet, intense man who also happens to have a conflict of interest: he’s in a relationship with Burtie’s mother. Weaving ably portrays a man who probes neither rudely nor politely. He exudes good intentions and uprightness, even when he takes morally dubious action. Rae’s investigation further divides Catherine and Matthew, particularly when he gently inquires about the possibility of paternal molestation.

This makes the already tightly wound Matthew smolder, and Fiennes knows how to smolder. His precise haircut and manicured beard are a perfect fit for a man trying to impose order on a chaotic family life. When Matthew’s kids were still home, he spent most of his energy tamping down his emotions. Early in the film, a dinner table squabble proves too much, and he lashes out verbally at Lily. His comment to her is enigmatic—this script guards its secrets—but it is enough to trigger her leaving. Guilt eats away at the put-upon patriarch until it transforms him into an Eastwood-esque vigilante, breaking doors and noses to get his little girl back.

It may be too late. Summer heat bears down and a dust storm stalls the search. Parents try to protect children from strangers, but what if the very environment they live in is a threat? Nor are the parents immune to the desolate environment. “The wind shows us how close to the edge we are,” Joan Didion wrote in her famous essay on the Santa Ana winds in California, and here the air pushes Catherine right over that edge. She has her own guilty conscience, believing Lily may have inherited her reckless sensuality, which now blossoms anew at all the wrong moments. Kidman holds nothing back as she lets passion and the elements whip Catherine first into a storm and then a stupor.

The moving Strangerland is visually beautiful without being flashy, and it haunts beyond the closing credits. The mystery of the disappeared children is resolved in a way that leaves a level of uncertainty without being unsatisfying. In some families, the kids are missing long before they run away.