Joy Cavill is a pioneer of women in the Australian film industry and she may as well have directed this, but it isn't very good.
I get the film was restricted in what it could show about Fraser's life, but really this sort of movie needs to emphasise relationships to work and it doesn't have it. Fraser's dad Ron Haddrick scowls while Dawn runs up and down stairs. She occasionally fights with her mother but the mother's death in a car crash is dealt with very quickly - far too quickly. Tom Richards as the coach doesn't do much. The one successful "arc" is her relationship with John Dietrich as her first husband because it has a beginning, middle and end - I wish they'd applied that to Dawn's relationship with her mother and coach and to the woman she has a fling with.
It's a failure of dramatisation. There's a good film in here struggling to get out. You get glimpses of it - Dawn struggling to fight authority, her hard drinking ways, but it's not enough. The film tries to pack in a lot - it covers from 1955 to 1970. The Tokyo Olympics are over by the one hour five minute mark. There's forty more minutes to go. Her marriage breaks up, she has a fling with a guy which results in abortion, has a (discretely told) lesbian fling. It just kind of ends... I mean she picks up her daughter from school and is determined to be a good mum, which is nice, and could have worked if they'd built to that, but then the credits play over a long scene of her talking to mates and... it's weird.
Browyn Mackay-Payne tries. She looks terrific - tall, gangly. She has a slouchy, insolent attitude that is occasionally effective. She's great in the pool. She seems to enjoy flirting with Ivar Kants. But the role is too much to ask her - she's got to age 15 years, to lose a mother, grow as a woman and person, buck authority, become a mother, fall in love, have a marriage break up. That is a hell of a lot for anyone - Judy Davis would've struggled. I can't think what actor around at the time could've pulled it off but surely there was one.
Despite the lesbian character being based on Cavil, that character is depicted as being a bit predatory... suggesting Fraser use the couch and having a perv at Fraser's naked back when she sleeps topless. The age difference doesn't help. It may be true to life but I got a predatory vibe.
Could this have worked? I would've focused it just on 1964 - death of mum, third gold, flag stealing - but get that they didn't want to go there. If they wanted 1955-70 I would have made it about Dawn realising she has to rely on herself... others can't save her... her mum, the men, or women... I would've made the officials more villainous and shown more sexism and stuffy natures. Had some fictional tin pot official who is her nemesis, and some vile sexist pig who is her swimming nemesis.
This isn't terrible. It is a misfire but it is fascinating.
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