© Jane
Freebury
It’s good
to know that a hide like a rhinoceros isn’t a prerequisite for working in a
cash converter business in multicultural Footscray. A thicker than usual epidermis
helps ensure better than breakeven results, but the experience need not shrivel
a bloke’s empathy or drain him of human kindness.
It seems it
might even inspire creativity. This is the proposition in this good-natured
study of people who are doing it tough and reflects the kind of optimism that
probably helped get this entirely independently funded production get up in the
first place.
Screenwriter
and support actor Damien Hill, who lives in Footscray, has a surprise up his
sleeve in the closing scenes that turns some of the grim things that you swear you
saw on their head. The turn-around may not
work for everyone—it didn't quite for me—but there’s no reason why the coda
can’t, I suppose, when action is confined to a 24-hour period.
Indeed, it
is not nearly long enough to get to know the characters who count in this ambitious
drama that managed to get a Tom Waits track for next to nothing to set the tone.
John
Brumpton brings a cynical but not unsympathetic tolerance to his character Les,
the shop owner, a pawnbroker, a world away from the role made forever famous by
Rod Steiger’s staggering treatment in 1965. If Les has anything to hide, you feel
pretty sure it’s nothing more than some life choices that didn’t deliver. His
best attribute is that he’s got time for folks, whatever their hard luck story.
That said, right now he has a bad toothache.
His assistant is young Danny (Hill), a bit of a day-dreamer
with a crush on Kate (Maeve Dermody) who works in a bookshop nearby. Danny’s soft
romantic heart is a push over for an earnest young man who wants to propose to
his girlfriend that evening but can’t quite afford the diamond ring he finds on
the tray and thinks will be perfect.
A film set
in a pawnshop is ripe with possibilities. Hill has built into his screenplay so many
characters with hints at their own distinctive backstories that the narrative
risks haring off in a dozen different directions. That this doesn’t happen is a
tribute to the writer, and first-time director Paul Ireland. Is there a TV
series in the offing?
A fair
proportion of the action takes place outside the shop premises, grounded in the
two men who hang out and provide comment, chorus-like, on the neighbourhood.
Meet Carlo (Malcolm Kennard) and Pauly (Mark Coles Smith) who anchor the street
as they bludge smokes and share meals from the Vietnamese takeaway owned by Lai
(Ngoc Phan). Lai is one of the characters who has something to give back to the
community, however the way this is expressed is a big misjudgment on a number
of levels. On the other hand, the vignette about transgender woman Paige (Daniel
Fredericksen) battling life with two young sons, is touching and makes you want
to see more.
Pawno flaunts a bit of cheek with a title that
sounds like the generic adult movie. There is a bit of sex and also a brutal
violent interlude that I’m not convinced we needed, but the engaging cast,
including Kerry Armstrong, too little seen these days, bring many of the
stories to life.
3 Stars
Also published at www.janefreeburywriter.com.au
