By Erin Free
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Billy Howle, Tom Bateman, Phoebe Tonkin, Mark Coles Smith, Hunter Page-Lockard, Nathan Phillips
Intro:
...a winning mix of the earthy and the mythic.
Aussie director Paul Goldman is one of this country’s genuine talents, and like so many of our filmmakers, he doesn’t really get the credit he’s due, especially since his films are so distinctly, unmistakably Australian. Whether it’s the poetic and controversial Australian Rules, the raucous The Night We Called It A Day, the utterly ferocious and mesmeric Suburban Mayhem or the rollicking but deeply moving Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story, Goldman’s films pick intelligently and creatively at the Australian psyche, at our somewhat checkered history, and our rich vein of popular culture. His typically impressive latest effort, Kid Snow, happily follows suit, looking both at a dusty relic of our recent past, and also at the violence that seems to exist at the heart of just about everything in this country.
Before the internet and before TV, when our entertainment options were considerably more limited, one of Australia’s most popular cultural fixtures was the boxing tent. On the back of trucks, carnivals would wheel their way around the country, setting up in small country towns, offering sideshows and entertainment, including a crew of boxers who would get in the makeshift ring and throw down against all local comers. It was a bloody, often brutal contest where the rules weren’t exactly rigorously policed, bordering almost on the gladiatorial.
It’s in these ramshackle travelling tents that the singularly gritty story of Kid Snow takes place. A mix of the poetic and the profane, the film follows the eponymous young Irish boxer (played exceptionally well by wonderfully brooding UK import Billy Howle), who drinks away his past demons while battering his new opponents, and constantly fighting his mouthy, bullying older brother Rory (Brit Tom Bateman is appropriately explosive and threatening), who runs the travelling carnival with an iron fist. The brothers’ all-piss-and-vinegar relationship becomes even more fraught when beaten down but still plucky single mum Sunny (the brilliant Phoebe Tonkin, who truly inhabits her character) joins the show as an exotic dancer. While the three form the emotional crux of the film, the troupe’s other boxers (Mark Coles Smith and Hunter Page-Lockard are both excellent in small roles) and outcasts (including Goldman’s Australian Rules star Nathan Phillips) weave effectively in and out of the story.
From its richly evocative imagery and finely honed recreation of the long-gone world of outback boxing tents through to its epic, time-honoured brand of familial fracture, Kid Snow is a winning mix of the earthy and the mythic. It’s both intimate and ambitious in scope, creating a whole community on camera but also digging in to the tiny but essential moments that make the people in it tick. The actors all do exemplary work, not just sharing voluble chemistry (Howle and Tonkin make for a great on-screen couple), but also drawing the audience right into their characters’ often heartbreaking lives. And while the bruised and battered ghosts of brilliant boxing films past (Raging Bull, The Fighter, Jungleland, Fat City) hover around threateningly, Kid Snow is very much its own hard-punching beast, mixing tenderness and tumult in a profoundly moving and affecting way.
