3.5 stars (out of 5)
Aussie Brendan Cowell’s darkly comedic 2009 play Ruben Guthrie was ripe for filming, and here Cowell makes his feature film début as writer/director/producer, bringing it to the screen with Patrick Brammall in terrific, tormented form as our titular ‘hero’.
Ruben is a high-flying Sydneyside ad exec with a house on the water, a Czech fiancée named Zoya (Abbey Lee), a party-friendly lifestyle and a serious drink and drugs problem, which comes to light in an opening scene that shows him almost killing himself by leaping off a roof while hammered. Forced to admit he’s an addict and then given a year to straighten out by Zoya (who flies home in a fury), Ruben tries hard to not hit the bottle, but it’s not easy given that his best work for boss Ray (Jeremy Sims) was done while high, his old mate Damian (Alex Dimitriades) has turned up insisting they both get wasted, and his parents Susan (Robyn Nevin) and Peter (Jack Thompson) are both dedicated, life-long drinkers.
After meeting the fragile Virginia (Harriet Dyer) at an AA meeting, Ruben starts to see life beyond booze, coke and maybe Zoya, and he also realises just how pervasive and destructive Australia’s whole drinking culture is. And it’s bloody depressing. So depressing, in fact, that he might need a drink to feel better.
Obviously an ‘Actor’s Director’, Cowell eases fine work out of his whole cast here, with Nevin and Thompson standouts as Ruben’s chummily but hopelessly alcoholic parents and Brammall shining in the difficult role of RG himself, and unafraid to demonstrate that RG would drive you absolutely mental in real life. Struth!!!
I Wake Up Screening 