How to Make Gravy film review: Paul Kelly’s beloved song soars on screen

It’s not every three-to-four-minute song that packs enough story into its short runtime to spin out a feature-length film.

Multihyphenate performer Julie Brown’s saucy ‘Earth Girls Are Easy’, about a horny alien crash-landing in her swimming pool, launched from her 1984 EP Goddess in Progress, transforming – via a torturously entangled production – into the Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans-led movie in 1988.

Barry Manilow sprung into his acting debut off the back of his colourful 1978 hit ‘Copacabana’, though the 1985 film of the same name was inexplicably transported from the ‘hottest spot north of Havana,’ to Manhattan. The least said about movie and musical-spawning Mama Mia!, the better.

Watch the How to Make Gravy trailer

This Christmas, Australia gains its very own champion of the cause via Nick Waterman’s gorgeous Paul Kelly-channelling debut feature, How to Make Gravy. Co-written with Batflowers star Megan Washington, they take Kelly’s gloriously plot-dense lyrics, including naming a near-full cast of characters, and breathe big screen life into them.

Snowtown star Daniel Henshall has carved a stellar career out of playing troubled young men, here inhabiting the uncomfortable skin of Kelly’s Joe, lingering in prison over Christmas and hoping, ‘If I get good behaviour, I’ll be out of here by July’.

We first spy him decked out on his bed while youngest son Angus (Jonah Wren Phillips) attempts to rouse him from his drunken slumber. The extended family’s descending on their home for the holiday, including dashing musician bother Dan (We Bury the Dead star Brenton Thwaites), who Joe’s mad at for not coming back when their mum was dying, and sister Stella (an always-excellent Kate Mulvaney) ‘flying in from the coast,’ with husband Roger (Damon Herriman).

It’s safe to say Roger and Joe don’t get on, so much so their head-locking sparks the incident that puts Joe behind bars, much to the just-about-done-with-this frustration of his long-suffering wife, Rita. In a surprising but epic score by casting director Nikki Barrett, she’s played by remarkable Titane star Agathe Rousselle, who brings a great deal of heart and soul to a smaller role.

A cracking opening credits montage set to Amyl and the Sniffers’ banger ‘Security’ sets the jailhouse scene, where Joe’s none too pleased Dan’s ‘funcle’ is sticking around to help Rita around the house after being absent for so long. With a jealous rage boiling, can Joe keep his head down long enough so he can be home by next Christmas?

How to Make Gravy: best shot    

Well, he gives it his best shot. But with old scars gouged deep by his late dad, Joe doesn’t find it easy to open up inside. This even when Hugo Weaving burly but nice Noel attempts to take him under his wing as a surrogate father figure. Noel runs the inmates’ kitchen, where Joe hopes to keep out of trouble by passing on his gravy-making secrets.

He’s unimpressed by the efforts of fabulous queer pop star Brendan Maclean’s eye-tattooed Possum, one of many musicians forming a prison chorus, including Electric Fields’ Zaachariaha Fielding. Washington also pops up, as does Adam Briggs as a prison guard.

But to snag a spot in this much-sought-after safe space, Joe will also have to join Noel’s support circle. Something that makes him excruciatingly uncomfortable, despite the older man’s best efforts and those of Benedict Hardie’s kindly priest, Father Guy.

When Joe eventually shares that his dad suicided when he was nine, he almost immediately brushes it off with a no-biggie, ‘Ah well’. But his wounded eyes tell a different story and Noel insists he not minimise his trauma.

But as with Charles Williams’ impressive prison-set feature debut Inside – Australian cinema sure loves the clinker – it’s not so easy to follow the right path. Especially with Animal Kingdom actor Kieran Darcy Smith’s bruiser, Red, spoiling for a fight. Will the hunt for contraband wine for the gravy also sink his chances of getting out in time? The latter plotline allows a scene-stealing punchline for Fayssal Bazzi’s drug-dealing Roy.

How to Make Gravy: masculinity

Waterman’s beautifully composed film dismantles Australian masculinity’s more toxic traits in a similar way to Weaving’s spikier role in Mark Leonard Winter’s The Rooster, or his more caring outlook as a bird of prey-handler guiding inmates towards a better life in Craig Monahan’s Healing. With a stacked cast this magnificent, led by Henshall and Weaving, you’ll feel all the feelings.

Not too schmaltzy, How to Make Gravy is imbued with the larrikin soul of Kelly’s deeply felt ditty, thrumming as it is with it’s complicated life. Boosted by Washington’s original songs and a mesmerising synth score by Samuel Dixon, who’s in high demand by mononymous stars like Kylie, Sia and Adele, it soars thanks to the assembled star’s choir.  

It also glitters like tinsel despite the bleak prison and grass-scorched suburban setting. Edward Goldner’s magic hour glow-like cinematography illuminates an inmate’s courtyard that looks more like it’s somewhere by the Mediterranean.

Seasonal films can be tacky – nudging sharp elbows towards gruesome Wham! hit-plundering movie Last Christmas. But that trend has been bucked by actually great Australian entrants of late, as started by Stan and passing the baton to Binge for this magical under-tree offering. In Waterman’s more than capable hands, for a relative beginner, How to Make Gravy will age like fine wine in the mix.

How to Make Gravy premieres on Binge on 1 December 2024.

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