A director with a passion for his characters and a leading-man and young actress delivering calling-card performances are just enough to get the rural-set Australian melodrama Shadows Of The Past over the line as acceptable, local low-budget filmmaking. As it stands, it will be remembered for its smooth use of digital cameras and beautiful locations far more than it will for its soapy plot-points and heartfelt (if uneven) acting.
Shot and set in the hinterland of the Queensland interior, multi-hyphenate Warren Ryan’s story centres on an almost-over-the-hill rodeo champ named Steve Kelly (Marcus Pointon), who decides to take on one last ride to exorcise the demons that torment him following an horrendous fall last time he took to the saddle. The prizemoney wouldn’t hurt – he struggles with the financial and emotional strains of a raising teenage daughter, Katie (Cassie Ryan) and maintaining a property with his new love, Krystal (Sally Kelleher).
To rev up the tension even further, script-writer Ryan establishes some father-son tension in the form of Gallipoli’s Mark Lee, playing the vibrant elder who can still pull the ladies (much to Steve’s embarrassment) and reintroduces to their lives Steve’s ex, Danii (Jordanna Allen) – an alluring, enigmatic figure whose reason to return to the town she left 13 years ago is never fully explained.
If not for some skimpy costumes and (unseen) bedroom antics, it would be easy to define this as the sort of wholesome entertainment that Disney may have distributed in the 1980s – Shadows Of The Past bears an uncanny resemblance to Steve Miner’s 1991 dusty family drama Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken, starring Gabrielle Unwar, or the several incarnations of My Friend Flicka.
But there is some meat on the story’s bones that make it dramatically worthwhile – despite Allen vamping it up a little too much, her mother-daughter scenes with Cassie Ryan are well-written and moving; the put-upon character of Krystal, played with an open warmth and empathy by Kelleher, provides gravitas when there is a little too much outback-swagger around her; and, as mentioned, Marcus Pointon as Steve – his furrowed brow, square-jaw and dignified characterisation reminding one of U.S. actor David Morse in his younger days – provides a strong heart and potent presence as the film’s central character. The father-daughter relationship he shares with Ryan provides the film’s strongest moments.
Central to the film’s foreboding sense of inevitability is the casting and performance of Black Friday – a bloody-great black bull that Steve must ride to win the rodeo contest. As menacing as Hannibal Lecter, Black Friday hams (beefs?) it up for the camera every time he appears on screen. He’s as big as Brando and he knows how to take direction.
From the unambiguous title, Shadows Of The Past doesn’t dig to deep to get its message across. But, if he doesn’t always get the tone or delivery right, director Ryan has a very obvious affinity for the rough-but-fair existence his story aims to celebrate and the audience for whom he has crafted his debut film. Getting a staggered regional release (it premiered in the town of Warwick, where it shot its exteriors) and casting such country-folk friendly names as singer Tania Kernaghan in support roles, it will certainly play better with the people on the land than the latte-sippers. But with too many Aussie films focussing on small-time crims, drug-addled lovers or morally-confused suburbanites, it’s hard to begrudge the industry a down-home tale about worthwhile people wanting to make the most of their lives. Makes for a nice change, actually...
