If Paul Kelly’s classic Christmas song makes you tear up, this film will too
By Garry Maddox
FILM
HOW TO MAKE GRAVY
★★★★
Rated M, 116 minutes
On Binge from December 1
Adapting a classic Christmas song into a film is a tricky business.
Take George Michael’s Last Christmas. Despite many promising elements, including Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding starring and Paul Feig of Bridesmaids fame directing, a beloved song was interpreted too literally in the 2019 film and the result was a dismal Christmas romance.
Daniel Henshall as Joe and Jonah Wren Phillips as his son Angus in How to Make Gravy.Credit: Jasin Boland / Binge
It diminished a classic song by reminding listeners of the film’s lame twist (spoiler alert: “I gave you my heart” refers to a heart transplant) every time they hear it.
Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy is another beloved Christmas song, so much so that the opening lines – “Hello Dan, it’s Joe here, I hope you’re keeping well / It’s the 21st of December, now they’re ringing the last bells” – can have even unsentimental Australians wiping away a tear any time of the year. It’s a song that feels authentically Australian – about yearning from a distance to be with your loved ones at Christmas, while struggling with your darkest thoughts.
The cleverness of director Nick Waterman’s film adaptation is how it captures the spirit of the song by expanding its universe. The result is a beautifully written and acted drama, with some comic flourishes, that feels as real and authentic as the song.
Daniel Henshall (Snowtown) plays Joe, whose fresh grief over losing his mother boils into violence at Christmas, which sends him to prison.
Fifty-one weeks later, he is missing his family and worrying about the interest his faded rock star brother Dan (Brenton Thwaites) has in Joe’s struggling French wife, Rita (Agathe Rousselle from Titane), as Christmas approaches.
In an inspired creative decision, screenwriters Meg Washington and Waterman turn the “Angus” mentioned in the song into Joe’s nine-year-old son (Jonah Wren Phillips), who misses his dad as much as his dad misses him.
Set in the recent past – an unspecified year before mobile phones – How to Make Gravy is immediately recognisable as taking place in suburban Australia, with its harsh summer light, sunburnt grass and string of Christmas lights on the metal front fence of a brick house with a trampoline in the backyard.
Agathe Rousselle as Rita in How to Make Gravy. Credit: Jasin Boland / Binge
The brothers from the song, now identified as Joe’s uncles (Kim Gyngell and Eugene Gilfedder), are driving down for Christmas and corporate Stella (Kate Mulvany) is flying in with her pompous husband, Roger (Damon Herriman). There are brief appearances from the other characters Kelly mentioned: Dolly (Izzy Westlake) and Frank (Rose Statham) are Joe’s daughters, and Mary (Eloise Rothfield) is Dan’s daughter.
While prison is barely sketched in the song other than the line “there’s sure as hell no one in here I want to fight”, Washington and Waterman detail a rough place where Joe is torn between his destructive anger and getting out as soon as possible to see his family.
Two prisoners who are not in the song – Noel (Hugo Weaving), a warm-hearted lifer who leads the prison kitchen team, and malevolent Red (Kieran Darcy-Smith) – draw him in opposite directions. Making gravy is not just a Christmas tradition; it’s a symbolically significant role for Joe in the kitchen.
There are only a few moments where a too-literal adaptation of the song clunks, such as when Joe says during a prison visit, “I’ll be out of here by July”, and Rita responds “with good behaviour”. Rousselle seems a touch too young and unshopworn considering the age of Rita’s three children and tough life, but her nationality adds another element to being distant from loved ones at Christmas.
For the rest of the film, it is an impressive expansion of the song to the screen, with moving performances by Henshall, Weaving and Herriman in particular, and restrained use of original songs written by Washington that deepen the yearning throughout the film.
If Kelly’s song makes you choke up, a film full of damaged characters wanting another chance at love and the closeness of family probably will too. As well as a song to listen to, there’s now a film to watch on Gravy Day.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.