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AUSTRALIAN
RULES
5/10
Australia 2002 : Paul Goldman : 98 mins
‘Some
rules are made to be broken,’ according to the poster tagline for Australian
Rules. A terrible cliché - but also strikingly inappropriate for a
film which quite slavishly follows the established format for teen-oriented
material dealing with Serious Issues. It’s an accessible, well-intentioned
exploration of racism and family violence, set among the blokey, rural
milieu of the outback.
The
broad comedy of the early scenes suggest an antipodean Bend
It Like Beckham, as we’re introduced to best pals Dumby Red (Luke
Carroll) and Gary “Blacky” Black (Nathan Phillips), who play in their
tiny town’s junior Australian Rules Football team. One is aborigine, the
other white, but while race isn’t a big issue for the lads, many of the
town’s adults aren’t quite so forward-thinking. Tensions come to a head
after the team wins a major regional tournament, the victory party turning
rapidly sour when Dumby is passed over for the ‘Best on Ground’ trophy
he deserves in favour of the team’s white captain. The tragic consequences
eventually bring Gary into painful confrontation with his violent, abusive
father (Simon Westaway)…
At
times resembling – in talent as well as looks – a dark-haired version
of a very young Jeff Bridges, Phillips copes particularly well with the
film’s jarringly abrupt change of tone at the mid-way point as circumstances
force Gary to grow up overnight. But such agility is notably lacking from
Goldman’s direction and script (co-written with Phillip Gwynne, and based
on the latter’s novel Deadly, Unna?) which becomes increasingly
conventional, predictable and schematic as it heads down depressingly
dark melodramatic avenues in the second half.
It doesn’t help that the performances – with the notable exceptions of Phillips
and Celia Ireland (underused as his long-suffering mother) – are occasionally
a little too rough-edged for comfort, though thankfully none of the kids
are quite as wooden as the hapless cast in this year’s other down-under
tale of outback teens battling racial prejudice, Ivan Sen’s Beneath
Clouds. While Australian Rules is clearly several leagues
above that shoddy effort, it’s very small beer alongside Bruce Beresford’s
The Club, a raucous, blisteringly hilarious expose of the
professional ARF scene from 1980 – made for adults, not adolescents.
27th August, 2002 (seen 20th, UGC Edinburgh – Edinburgh
Film Festival)
by Neil
Young
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