RUBEN GUTHRIE

This year has been a sterling one for Australian cinema, filled with genuinely stunning films such as ‘Holding The Man’, ‘The Dressmaker’, ‘Partisan’, ‘Women He’s Undressed’ and ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’. It seems that a kind of maturity and daring has returned en masse to our film industry, with many releases finding the balance between integrity and entertainment. Unfortunately, one of the films I’d hoped would end up in that list turned out to be anything but - Brendan Cowell’s directorial debut ‘Ruben Guthrie’. If the others are mature and daring, this one is petulant and lazy.

Based on Cowell’s acclaimed play, the film follows successful ad man and party boy Ruben Guthrie (Patrick Brammall) as he navigates a year of sobriety after his girlfriend Zoya (Abbey Lee) leaves him, fed up with his out-of-control alcoholism. The film launches in its opening moments with brash energy and excess, loud and thumping and in-your-face. This seems like a good place to start for what you assume will be some sort of commentary on Australian drinking culture, but it turns out that Cowell isn’t interested in that.

The shock of the film is that even though Ruben goes through a year of temptations and heavy questioning, he never actually gets anywhere. This is never the fault of Brammall, whose performance is the highlight of the film, far more detailed and human than the material he’s working with, but the filmmaking is tremendously lazy and unfocused, and the characters surrounding Ruben are mostly reprehensible. His parents (Robin Nevin and Jack Thompson) only exist to question their son’s decision to go sober, his new love interest (Harriet Dyer) is aggravating and unlikable, and his boss (Jeremy Sims) spends the whole film trying to force booze down Ruben’s throat even though he himself is staying sober. They pale in comparison though to Ruben’s gay best friend Damian (Alex Dimitriades), a repulsive creature who offers the greatest temptations and excesses to Ruben in the form of booze and drugs. Of course the most debaucherous character is gay, and of course he needs to be loud and obnoxious and irresponsible. This kind of gay stereotype is so old and tired, and its use in the film is flat-out offensive. You’d have thought we’d have moved past this kind of horrible characterisation. Thankfully, Abbey Lee and Brandon Thwaites (as a new up-and-comer threatening Ruben’s position at the ad firm) are both breaths of fresh air, and Brammall really is so good that he makes the film worth watching.