By Erin Free
“It’s very much informed by my own experiences, but also by the experiences of others,” writer/director, Craig Boreham tells FilmInk. “When I was younger, I worked at 2010, which was a service for members of the LGBTQI community who were homeless. I was informed a lot by the stories that I heard there. There was a real commonality to the stories, and it was the pattern of those stories that informed me. The same themes would come up again: falling in love with your best friend, tension among the family, and the concept of living a secret life.”
Surging with a powerful sense of immediacy and authenticity, it’s no surprise to hear that Boreham’s coming-of-age drama, Teenage Kicks, is ripped largely from real life. At the film’s core is Miklos (Miles Szanto) the youngest son in a migrant family weighed down with whispers of scandal. When he inadvertently causes the death of his older brother, Miklos is sent on a hectic, breathless downward spiral. Confused and racked with guilt and grief, he stumbles into an awkwardly nurturing relationship with his late brother’s pregnant girlfriend (Shari Sebbens), while at the same time coming to the realisation that he is gay. With no support or guidance from his distant family, Miklos lurches into a series of sexual fumblings with increasingly seedy strangers, though it is his own best friend, Dan (Daniel Webber), that he really burns for. Dan’s new girlfriend, Phaedra (Charlotte Best), meanwhile, only further complicates Miklos’ increasingly complicated life.
The son of a baker in a highly multicultural part of Brisbane (“We were the only white family on the block,” Boreham laughs), the debut feature writer/director has crafted a telling, honest look at both growing up gay and growing up in a migrant family built on a foundation of tradition and expectation. Teenage Kicks almost feels like cinematic relative of Ana Kokkinos’ uncompromising 1998 barnstormer, Head On, in which Alex Dimitriades’ Ari roughly and recklessly navigates life as a young man whose burgeoning homosexuality is at odds with the ideals of his Greek family. “I haven’t seen it since it came out,” Boreham says hesitantly when FilmInk suggests a kinship between the two films. “I loved Christos Tsiolkas’ book, Loaded, that it was based on. Ours is a very different story…ours is more about dealing with a sustained sense of grief. Teenage Kicks is certainly peppered with the same kind of questions though, only twenty years later. It’s actually amazing how little has changed.”
As well as dealing with the gay experience, Teenage Kicks also boasts a gay Aussie icon in a major role, with former NRL star turned actor, Ian Roberts, giving an affecting performance as Jack, the hulking but big hearted (and very straight) single father of Miklos’ best mate. “I wrote it with him in mind,” Boreham says of Roberts, who has also appeared in the likes of Superman Returns and the controversial Hate Crime. “I’d worked with him on a short film, and I’d always kept in touch with him, and said that I wanted to work with him again. He’s a really great actor, and he doesn’t get used enough. I was really excited to see him do something different too. It was great to see him playing a single dad, and not a thug! But I still loved how imposing he was – he’s this huge man, but he’s playing this single dad who’s just struggling through.”
Roberts might be an eye-catching supporting player, but Teenage Kicks really thrives in the performances of its young cast, all of whom not only rise to the dramatic needs of the material, but also to the demands of the film’s many sex scenes. “It’s not as bad as you’d imagine,” Boreham laughs of the difficulties of guiding his young performers through some tricky scenes. “We’d just pull the scenes apart. There was a lot happening in all of those scenes too. We didn’t just cut to a sex scene. There were things that the characters were fighting for, and there were major story points in those scenes. So, in that respect, they weren’t that different to any other scenes. That’s what we talked about when we were preparing those scenes. We also got people very comfortable with their physicality, so they could be as relaxed as possible in those scenes. There was also a clinical element to it in terms of having to block out the shots. All of that helped, but it does get a bit awkward, yeah.” Making it even trickier? The fact that a few of those sex scenes actually unfold outdoors. “We had to lock down those areas, but we had tiny crews, so that made it easier,” Boreham says.
A key inclusion in this year’s Mardi Gras Film Festival, Teenage Kicks is also part of a mini-wave of gay-themed Australian dramas, sitting comfortably alongside other titles like Drown and Downriver. “There has been a real push of independent queer films,” Boreham offers. “And they have been independent, with most of them being made outside of the screen organisations. I know a lot of those other filmmakers, and we’ve kind of come up together. I think we’re all just at that same point where we’re like, ‘Fuck it! We’re just gonna make it ourselves.’ That’s been great. What’s been really good about that is that people have seen that there’s an audience out there for these films. That’s always the difficult thing about getting these queer stories up and funded. There are always questions about whether there’s an audience for these films, and we’re seeing that there is. Yes, it’s a niche audience, but it’s considerable and it’s big enough to support these films. That’s very exciting.”
Teenage Kicks will screen at The Mardi Gras Film Festival on February 21 at Event Cinemas, George Street in Sydney. Click here to buy tickets. Teenage Kicks will also screen at The Brisbane Queer Film Festival on March 15 at Newfarm Cinemas, Brunswick. Click here to buy tickets. And if you’d like to organise your own screening of Teenage Kicks, click here.
Great film, Craig Boreham obviously put his heart and soul into this one