“How to Make Gravy” review – a well-intentioned, maudlin misfire | Australian film

H“Ow to Make Gravy” is a rare example of a film that originated as a song – in this case, Paul Kelly’s popular ballad. Given the entertainment industry’s addiction to recycling existing intellectual property, perhaps one day it will be possible to adapt popular titles into films. Not that I’m looking forward to it: This sweet Christmas drama from debut feature director Nick Waterman shows how texts can become a series of reference points, with the obvious temptation to be very visual and literal – to give us that impression of a gravy boat, which was reverently passed around the dining room table.

Waterman uses the sauce early in the running time, staging it as a moment of quasi-religious significance. This is not a subtle film – in some scenes my face reacted not as if I had eaten a delicious, nutritious sauce (with a dollop of tomato sauce for sweetness and added flavor), but as if I had devoured a brick-sized block of artery-clogging sauce Cheese.

It’s no surprise that much of the film takes place in prison, considering that the song’s narrator – a man named Joe, played by Daniel Henshall – sits in the slammer lamenting that he won’t be home for Christmas, his sauce recipe a symbolic means of expressing his love for home and family. But I never took this film seriously as a prison drama because a hint of weirdness gives it an air of cheesy unreality. For example: a moment when a prison choir performs an uplifting piece about the need to be yourself and “sing like no one is listening.” How long would these guys last in a real prison before getting a knuckle sandwich?

Joe is portrayed as a decent man who has made some mistakes. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if we’re going to consider this a redemption story, the journey has to feel earned and Joe’s offenses have to feel real. He is sent to prison after a violent confrontation between his brother-in-law Roger (Damon Herriman) and a police officer who wants to arrest him for a crime we don’t actually see. But it feels very much like the writers (Waterman and musician Megan Washington) are making excuses for him: This is Joe’s first Christmas without his mom, after all, and he just got a little carried away, not really Meaning headbutt a police officer. Joe’s son Angus (Jonah Wren Phillips) defends him off-camera and emphasizes: “My father is not bad. He’s a good dad who had a really bad day.”

From these shaky opening moments, the film has a lot to live up to and needs to have some courage if it is to be taken seriously as a hard-luck story about making amends in the prison yard. Instead, it comes dangerously close to the idea that a dose of sauce can magically cure what ails you. Joe joins the prison’s culinary team and shares his food with the team, which also includes Hugo Weaving’s Noel, a wise, fatherly figure who leads a men’s group. Joe’s sauce tastes so good that even Red (Kieran Darcy-Smith), a sinister man who has made a habit of harassing him, pauses to savor its qualities. Brown meat sauce as a soul-refreshing elixir that unites villains.

Henshall is an amazing actor at times, tearing up the screen in Acute Misfortune and Snowtown. But here he’s limited by the script and he doesn’t quite manage to get the colors and shades needed to portray Joe in full dimension. More effective, albeit in a supporting role with less screen time, is French actress Agathe Rousselle (known for her fierce performance in the body horror film Titane) as Joe’s wife Rita. She struggles at home with the children and is supported by Joe’s brother Dan (Brenton Thwaites). She becomes painfully aware that her life is trapped in a bleak but slightly hopeful present – better times lie behind her and perhaps better times ahead.

Throughout the film one senses the temptation to take it literally; Thank goodness we didn’t see that scene where Joe reads out a letter he’s writing – starting, of course, with “Hello Dan, it’s Joe, I hope you’re well…” There are also times when How to Make Sauce slowly moves into a deeper, more meditative space, only to get a little misty-eyed and fall into sentimentality. I’m sure great songs may inspire great films – but this one is a well-intentioned misfire.