j* Movie Reviews 2019

Ride Like A Girl (2019)

It's a big call to make, but I'm calling it - this is the best *Australian* movie since Red Dog 1.

I don't mean just it's a movie made in Australia, I mean it's a film that I found really captured what I feel is the sort of essence of Australianism. This could be because I'm generationally similar to Michelle Payne, and maybe this just captures the 90s childhood vibe. It has that glorious sense of lackadaisical suffering of injustice, that progresses via hilarity to the eventual "yeah, nah." And in Australian cultural change there is nothing more powerful than a emphatic "yeah, nah" and the nod of approval from a former enemy.

Often movies telling of a feminist triumph feel like they have to have a big sweeping speech moment, a big showdown of this mentality vs that, a moment where the female change agent has to say "I'm doing this for all women everywhere and we will rise up and be powerful." This film, I think, masters the reality of the long slow burn of change. The revolutionary moments are just the one individual doing a thing within the confines of their humanity, and you're really left to feel the power of their personal human struggle and how it rewrote history. Not at the time, but only with the benefit of successful hindsight. Michelle's story tells us not just her own personal triumph, but the experiences of all other female jockeys that never won the Melbourne Cup, including her sisters. If you wanna make an omelette you're gonna break some eggs.

Unusually for a true story, this actually starts with real archival footage. I can't think off the top of my head of any other film that does this and it's actually really powerful. Because it didn't take away from my ability to believe the actors were the characters, and it did really strengthen my knowledge of Michelle Payne and her story and family straight up - if I'd just been thrown into the film without the doco beginning I may have struggled to fully grasp that the mass of swirling characters was a family of ten children, eight of whom became jockeys. I might have thought one of the older ones was a mother, and not understood that her mother died when she was a baby. The use of real footage to bookend the narrative story front and back was really cool. Kind of like someone sitting you down as they open a book and saying "I'm going to tell you the true story of..." and then at the end "... and all of this was real" as they close the book up.

And in the middle, the big block of biography, despite the fact you know the outcomes, you really feel the ride. Not just the amazingly close footage of the thundering hooves and twitching ears and pulsing horse rumps. You feel the emotional ride of a lifetime condensed into a couple of hours. I guess it's one of those examples of "spoilers" having no power over enjoyment - there were enough little fun and intense things throughout that knowing the outcomes made no difference. In fact, freed from uncertainty of the final ending, it allowed me to really get in close with the family and characters.

It's a cast of super-awesome Australian actors, familiar faces at every turn, from Sam Neil, to Mick Malloy to Magda Szubanski to Brooke Satchwell. There are so many funny bits that are fused at the hip with emotional moments in a real "if you don't laugh you'll cry" kind of way. There are just so many lines that stick with, one of my favourite being Michelle's manager trying to sell this "lady-jockey" to a trainer and explaining the fact that she's a girl as "a human mare, if you like." The delicious irony of female horses being good enough to run, but female jockeys not being good enough to ride was everything. There's also the side-spirit of inclusion around Michelle's Downs Syndrome brother that plays a nice parallel to her story. And again, it's just a bit of a character and that one good human deciding they'll give them a shot. The on-screen brother is played by the *real* Stevie Payne.

There's a lot of what appears to be real race footage used at a distance, and only a real racing-nerd would probably be able to pick up that the horses they ride up close are not the real racehorses. Being racehorse obsessed, I'm pretty sure the Payne family have Phar Lap the movie playing on tv nearly all the time. We know that racing is dangerous for horses, and this also delves into the reality of it being dangerous for jockeys. And how they tackle it with the same intense spirit of any extreme sportsperson.

I laughed a lot, I got a bit teary, sometimes I did both at the same time for the same and different reasons. I enjoyed all the characters so much, and the eventual moments of triumph were so delightfully balanced. It's getting the nod that really counts.

Honestly, I seldom experience so many diverse feels in a film.

J* gives it 5 stars.

PS. Look, horseriding... I'm not here to judge a sport or recreational activity, I'm here to review a film about women doing a thing they didn't used to do.