Strictly Ballroom

Strictly Ballroom started life as a 1984 stage play invented by Australian film director Baz Luhrmann and fellow students at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, which though premiering to medium reception, increasingly improved with each passing showing. Plans were eventually set into motion by Australia music executive, Ted Albert, and his wife Antoinette, to turn it into a film, and after setting up the production company, M&A Productions with ex-Film Australian producer, Tristram Miall, and Luhrmann securing the rights to direct the film himself, the movie was released in 1992, and the results were very notable, not just on the home front, but on a global level. Scott Hastings (played by Paul Mercurio) is a frustrated son of a family of ballroom dancers who had recently failed to win the Southern Districts Waratah Championships. This was due to rejecting the more classical style of dance and wishing to express his own unique style, which puts him at odds with his mother, Shirley (played by Pat Thomson), his dance instructor Les Kendall (played by Peter Whitford) and his dancing partner, Liz Holt (played by Gia Carides) who leaves Scott to team up with recent winner but notoriously drunk dancer, Ken Railings (played by John Hannan). Having no one to dance with for the upcoming Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Competition, Scott is approached by overlooked beginner dancer, Fran (played by Tara Morice), who after some convincing, start practicing as a duo and quickly realize they work quite well together. However, with everyone around him including the head of the Australian Dancing Federation, Barry Fife (played by Bill Hunter) telling him that dancing with a novice will ruin his chances of winning, and the pressure of fulfilling the long-lost dream of his father, Doug (played by Barry Otto) on his shoulders, will Scott actually be forced to fall in line and do things by the book and abandon Fran (who he has fallen in love with) to earn the gold? Receiving strong reception and earning $80 million worldwide (making it one of the highest grossing Australian films ever at the time), Strictly Ballroom impressed many with its glitz and glamour and propelled a newcomer like Baz Luhrmann to stardom status overnight. Being a picture that contains a lot of Luhrmann’s usual issues as well as his genuinely good elements, Strictly Ballroom acts as a decently likeable first outing for a fresh talent.

With the original play taking inspiration from several real-life incidents that Luhrmann himself experienced while studying as a ballroom dancer under his mother, it feels like this movie was very special to Luhrmann. This stands true for various people that helped create the picture, all of whom would work with Luhrmann in the future, like writer Craig Pierce (who helped him rewrite the play and acted as the film’s screenwriter), actor Catherine McClements, production designer and Luhrmann’s future wife, Catherine Martin, set dresser Bill Marron and costume designer Angus Strathie. The movie did face several setbacks, like having trouble securing funding since nobody was willing to fund a project led by a newcomer director and a cast of mostly no names, and this became much more difficult once Ted Albert passed away, but Antoinette decided to label the movie in his name, acted as an executive producer on the film, and with her blessing, allowed his family company, Albert Music, to invest $1 million into the picture, giving it just enough of a push to mitigate potential benefactors and help it reach the film festival circuit. All this strife they faced does make the successful end results pretty uplifting, but the hesitation met by others wasn’t entirely unfounded, as the film does have a fair number of faults, especially in regard to its scripting. The screenplay written by Luhrmann, Pierce, and Andrew Bovell (who originally made the film much more serious, but this element was eventually balked), is packed with a lot of familiar tropes, sticking a plotline as basic as a non-lethal Romeo & Juliet in a very wild and off-the-walls production set within a dancing studio. It creates conflict that feels forced, makes the characters act insane and stupid (even more so than the directing), results in nothing really surprising or engaging happening, and even becomes a little hard to follow due to the feverishly rabid directing style and the specific Australian vocality. With that said, Baz Luhrmann does highlight all of his unique qualities in this first outing, and while that contains both the good and the bad, also shows why he’s someone to look out for. While he definitely stumbles when it comes to handling his stories, leading his actors, and even composing and pacing his films to an understandable manner, he does have an amazing eye for visuals, brings a chaotic and often annoying but still distinct performative nature to his actors and production, and can do a decent amount with a very minuscule budget, at least helping what could’ve been a small project blossom into a bombastic, in-your-face experience that no one was going to forget.

The performances are mostly from people who have either never been in a feature film before, have mostly been relegated to smaller parts, or are only famous within a specific section of the world. That does provide a nice niche quality for the film that leans into the naturalist presentation the crew was going for, but the hyperactive atmosphere and Luhrmann’s directing style makes everybody come across as a blathering cartoon, with varying results. Next to no one in this movie feels like a real person, and even though the established environment is set up in an way where everyone’s acting can border on fully hysterical without feeling random, due to the lameness of the script and how a good chunk of the characters act as antagonists for something as frivolous and stupid as a dancing competition, it results in a good chunk of them coming across as egocentric, shallow and unbearably obnoxious. This isn’t even reserved for just the supporting cast, as the lead struggles with this attitude and can be a bit of a pain to sit through as well, not helped out by the fact that Paul Mercurio is not the best actor (they specifically picked him for his dancing abilities, not his acting capabilities). His character feels pretty bratty, his motivation seems pretty unexplained and simplistic, the hurdles he has to overcome seem quite juvenile (is freestyle dancing really that dangerous to the Australian dancing scene?) and he lacks so much of his own identity that he just keeps getting passed around from person to person and abiding by their wants rather than his own, it’s not that great a lead despite his dancing being pretty fantastic. Peter Whitford, Bill Hunter, and Pat Thomson (who tragically passed away a month before the film was premiered at the Cannes film festival) seem like capable actors, yet their characters are so one-note annoying and shrill that they can be a pain to sit through, which can also be said for Gia Carides, who is stuck with an awfully boring and shouty role. With that said, some of the other actors are able to salvage what they can and make the most of what they’re given. Tara Morice does nice enough as Fran (although pulling the ‘’Princess Diaries’’ effect of making her look frumpy only to become more accessible after she gets a make-over is a little forced), her father and grandmother (played by Antonio Vargas and Armonia Benedito) add a hint of composed flair to the picture as well as nice touch of Spanish culture (even though Morice doesn’t look the least bit Spanish), and Barry Otto actually delivers a nice understated performance as Scott’s father, especially when he gets the chance to shine in the third act.

The production value of Baz Luhrmann’s movies is something he has always been praised for even against his shoddy scripts and manner of storytelling, but with a budget of $3 million, it felt like there was little chance he’d be able to showcase that side of himself in this feature. The first 30 mins are almost a little hard to watch with how poor some of the technical aspects are, with a camera quality that is abysmal for the time period (despite coming out in 1992, it looks like something out of the 60s), lighting that is so blaring that everything is out of focus and unclear, and visual tricks that feel very odd and even cheaply handled, it doesn’t present itself in the best light. However, as the film keeps going, not only does the lighting improve a bit and the movie ton down the camera work by Steve Mason to something more mainstream and standard (although there are still a lot of awkward extreme close ups and bizarre reaction shots), it reaches a point where you can genuinely feel them trying their best to use what little money they have to provide something visually pleasing. The dancing is impressively done by the two leads, with the scenes of them together against the backdrop of either the cityscape, the main dance floor or even just a closed curtain, feeling decently engrossing due to the impressive nature of the moves, how well these numbers work in tandem with the songs they’ve picked to accompany them, and even how these moments are filmed and paced. The editing by Jill Bilcock is quite good in these moments, knowing to interject just enough quick cuts to offer either a new reaction or new perspective, but also knows when to dial back the cuts and just allow the scenes to play out and show off the moves in all their glory. The production design by Catherine Martin along with the costume design by Martin and Angus Strathie, encompasses the surreal and vibrant nature of the film and its characters, never showing off too much to the point of being obnoxious but still being flashy and eccentric enough to add to the personality and ludicrous-ness of what would become a typical Luhrmann experience.

Strictly Ballroom is not a work of art by any means and for those that aren’t privy or even enjoy Baz Luhrmann’s style, this movie isn’t going to sway you (if anything, it might make you hate it more). But while he is definitely a mixed bag director, no one can deny that he leaves an impression, and when he’s in his element and has material that works with his style rather than against it, he can pull off something memorable, and this movie is nothing short of memorable. The script is pretty bad, the actors can be a little too much, the characters are pretty unlikeable a good chunk of the time, and it does show its low budget in ways that can be physically distracting, but there are a few choice actors that shine in the right way, the production value does improve as the film continues, and the dances scenes are very well done (and are the only times the two leads show any sign of actual chemistry). For what was the start of his career as well as his ‘’Red Curtain’’ trilogy (with the others being Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge), this was a pretty clear demonstration of what he can do right, what he can do wrong, and what he can do oh so weirdly.