- by Peter Farmer
- The Guardian
- Issue #2195
Strictly Ballroom is back, in a fresh high quality 4k re-release, although for many Australians the movie was so popular, it might feel like ‘Strictly’ never went away.
A UK reviewer summed it up as “narcissistic white rebel finds love in the ghetto, and his defiance gets everyone dancing.” As an Australian who loved the film when it first came out 30 years ago, and has had to watch it many times since (Strictly Ballroom always goes down well with language classes), I baulk at this blunt dismissal, but see their point.
For all those who missed Strictly Ballroom because they were busy doing other things like not being born yet, here’s a summary. In an Aussie country town seemingly inhabited only by ballroom dancing fanatics, Scott (Paul Mercurio) is the golden boy, about to become the supreme champion and delight his mother who runs dance classes and possibly his father, who tidies up the studio and looks after a guilty secret we don’t find out about until the end.
Scott just lives for the dance itself, is bored with being the best at the same old dance moves and craves new ones. He finds them in the lovable migrant community of Fran (Tara Morice), whose family teaches him to dance the ‘pasa doble’ Spanish-style while Fran completes her ugly-duckling-removes-glasses-and-reveals-true-beauty transformation at lightning speed. Wikipedia tells us that Fran’s family is Spanish, but watching the movie when it came out, all that came across was that they were non-Anglo migrants. Everyone else in this regional ballroom-obsessed town is anglo-Australian. Scott discovers Fran’s ethnic identity when she berates him in Spanish while still in her ugly-duckling phase. Fran’s family are the only non-anglos in the movie, so it’s not really a case of Scott finding love in the ghetto so much as him finding real dancing in a backyard.
At one level, the movie is a celebration of the kitschy world of competitive ballroom dancing – bright colours, foofy dresses, old songs we haven’t heard for ages (the movie finishes by bringing back the 70’s hit Love is in the Air), and people dancing with numbers on their backs, treating dancing as a competitive sport. At another it’s the old story of the art-for-art’s sake loner shocking the establishment by following his dream. It’s not spoiling the movie to say that Scott wins the contest and gets the (now glasses-free) girl. Art for art’s sake triumphs and there’s a big dance at the end.
There’s a lot of small town dagginess that probably escaped the British reviewer, but is absolute catnip for Australian audiences – as with ‘the Castle’ and ‘Kath and Kim.’ Nobody goes broke giving middle-class Australians a chance to mock those less privileged. The satire is sometimes affectionate – there’s a moving scene in which Scott’s father does a furtive but happy dance around a Hills Hoist clothesline.
Luhrman went on to make the 1990s Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge, so big kitsch musical sequences are obviously his thing. The music, kitsch and dance scenes age well, but Mercurio’s acting doesn’t – at the time everyone was overwhelmed by his good looks along with the colours and music.
If you’ve never seen Strictly Ballroom, and you like a bit of colour and music with an Australian accent, check it out, it’s fun.
