Playing For Charlie (M). Director: Pene Patrick. Starring: Jared Daperis, Jodie Rimmer, Shane Connor, Mark Leonard Winter, Charlotte Zerna. Running time: 95 minutes.
Given the perennial challenges confronted by the Australian film industry, it would be easy to write Playing For Charlie off as another missed opportunity. In fact many elements in the first feature from Victoria based writer-director Pene Patrick work well.
Not the least of these is a strong performance from Daperis as Tony, a Rugby Union prodigy from Melbourne's western suburbs. Playing For Charlie is Tony's coming-of-age story. Though still at high school, Tony is responsible for caring for his infant brother Charlie (Zerna), as well as his mother Paula (Rimmer), who has MS. When the opportunity arises for Tony to try out for the state rugby team and possibly pursue a dream career, he is torn between his sport and his family. That said, success in the former could see the latter supported for life.
Playing For Charlie evokes a sense of sport as class warfare. Tony is the working class underdog battling to excel in a sport dominated by private school boys. The first challenge he faces in joining the team is a financial one: he needs to replace his glasses with a pair of contact lenses, but lacks the money to do so. He's also clearly on the outer, unrepresented in the collegial old boys' club of dads who have the state team coach's ear.
A long lost half brother (Winter) arrives on the scene to help Tony out with contact lenses and flashy athletic gear — the unemployed Scarf is mysteriously cashed up. Or maybe not so mysteriously; the temptation for the poor westie Tony to engage in petty crime is a cliché too far, but does help to highlight the social structures that define Tony's world, that oppress him and his family, and from which he hopes sporting success will free him.
While there is much to enjoy in Playing For Charlie, there are fundamental problems too. It has a divided focus, and a lack of balance between its different parts. On the one hand it is a domestic drama that emphasises the struggles of a working class family after the death of the primary breadwinner (Tony's father), and the additional pressure placed on the teenage Tony as student, carer and teenage boy with his own dreams and ambitions.
The mother-son chemistry between Daperis and Rimmer