Film & TV

Film Review: Ruben Guthrie

Aussies love a drink, don’t they? BBQs, client functions, or with lovers, parents and friends. Australia was built on the back of its pub-going, bond-over-a-beer culture. But are we too reliant on booze as a social lubricant, and who are we as individuals without it?

RubenGuthrie

Aussies love a drink, don’t they? BBQs, client functions, or with lovers, parents and friends. Australia was built on the back of its pub-going, bond-over-a-beer culture. But are we too reliant on booze as a social lubricant, and who are we as individuals without it? Those are some of the bigger questions that new Aussie dramedy, Ruben Guthrie, addresses.

Based on the hit play by acclaimed writer, actor and director, Brendan Cowell, and produced by Kath Shelper, Ruben Guthrie tells the story of a fabulously successful ad exec living a hedonistic, playboy lifestyle.

The opening scene depicts Guthrie (played by Patrick Brammall) bellowing “Let’s get smashed!” to a horde of party goers at his lush, waterfront Sydney abode. Then, just for the fun of it, he decides to dive into his pool from the roof of his house, breaking an arm and avoiding death by mere inches.

This is the end of the line for Zoya (Abbey Lee), his gorgeous Czech, swimsuit-model fiancée, who has put up with this man-child’s alcohol-fuelled behaviour for years. She leaves, going back to her mother’s place in Prague, giving Ruben Guthrie with an ultimatum that she’ll only return if he manages to stay off the sauce for an entire year.

Thus begins Ruben’s road to sobriety. At first a reluctant member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he goes to great lengths to persuade attendees that he’s not like them. After all, he’s rich, successful, doesn’t wear the seemingly mandatory K-Mart trackies all the other poor sods there are dressed in. But, determined to win Zoya back, he sticks with it and soon begins to learn about himself and even like who he is when he isn’t sloshed.

Then begin the difficulties and the real focus of this movie. Australia, and especially Australian men, it seems, don’t tolerate teetotallers well.

Ruben’s boss at the advertising agency accuses him of losing his edge and puts him up against YouTube sensation, Chet (Brenton Thwaites) in a battle of brawn and male ego. His dad (Jack Thompson), also an over-enthusiastic grog consumer in denial about the cause of his pancreatitis, doesn’t much like it either. He just wants his son to have a drink with his old man. Then there’s the clients who love Ruben’s out-there partying ways, and Ruben’s flamboyant gay best friend, Damian (Alex Dimitriades), who’s horrified at this ‘stage’ Ruben’s going through.

Throw in Virginia (Harriet Dyer), Ruben’s 13th-stepping sponsor, and predictably, the ‘other woman’, his mother, who’s convinced Ruben can learn to control his drinking with sufficient willpower, and it all makes for a tough, funny, dark road to redemption for Ruben Guthrie.

As a movie, the story, cinematography, acting and depiction of Australia’s most superficial city work wonderfully. The tone is light and non-preachy while still conveying an important message about alcohol abuse.

Brammall is both lovable and appalling in the main role, Abbey Lee gives an impressive performance as the excruciatingly hard-done by fiancée, and Alex Dimitriades is just awesome fun. But while it’s easy to digest, enjoy and take something away, Ruben Guthrie does perhaps make light of the recovery process those with alcohol and other addictions (drugs, gambling, food, sex etc) go through in order to both reach ‘rock-bottom’ and ascend from there. It does touch on these aspects, but not as deeply as other movies focusing on addiction such as Leaving Las Vegas, When a Man Loves a Woman, or even Sandra Bullock’s 28 Days. However, as the point of the story really seems to be how society treats and tolerates those who choose not to drink, the recovery process itself is more or less secondary.

A great Australian production, very well worth seeing.

Reviewed by Samantha Bond
Twitter: @sambond

Ruben Guthrie opens in cinemas on 16 July 2015.

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