Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #113: Australian Rules (2002).

In the remote, fictional town of Prospect Bay, South Australia, all that connects the conflicting black and white communities is Australian rules football. An exception, however, are two teenage best mates: white Gary "Blacky" Black (Nathan Phillips) and Aboriginal Dumby Red (Luke Carroll). Dumby is the footy team's poster boy with a bright future in the national AFL; Blacky is the bookish son of a hard-living fisherman (Simon Westaway) and his abused wife (Celia Ireland), who nonetheless happens to be a brilliant football tactician. Their coach is the local butcher Mr. Robertson (Kevin Harrington), whose charges call him "Arks" behind his back because in true Ocker form he always pronounces "asked" as "arksed." Blacky's existence is suddenly changed completely when he accidentally helps the team win the local premiership and develops the hots for Dumby's sister Clarence (Lisa Flanagan). A dangerously fateful change occurs, however, when a white player is named Best on Field over Dumby (to his fury), awakening the previously dormant racial tensions in Prospect Bay.

Based on Phillip Gwynne's novels Deadly, Unna? and Nukkin Ya, Australian Rules arrived in 2002 slap-bang in the middle of the renewed debate about race in Australia under the conservative Howard Government (1996-2007), which I lamentably grew up under. But while it effectively distills the story's political undercurrent and mixes that with the framing device of sport, Australian Rules also beautifully and tenderly depicts the evergreen aspects of coming age: parent-child conflicts, finding your social crowd, navigating first love and finding your calling et al. Co-writer and director Paul Goldman brings just the right touch to all these themes as well. 

And he draws dynamic performances from his whole cast. Carroll objectively infuses Dumby with a potent fusion of energy and smoldering anger, Ireland gives striking dignity to what could've been just another cowed housewife role, Westaway has genuine presence and menace as Gary's racist, brutal father and Flanagan is sweetly affecting and charismatic. But it's Phillips who outdoes them all in his breakthrough performance, expertly covering Gary's trajectory from an easygoing, upstanding young everyman and athlete to one who ends up disillusioned with virtually everything besides his game and his girl. His final scene with Westaway, particularly, is just like a guttural howl.

Mixing politics and sport is always risky, and doing so in a bildungsroman is also quite rare, but in Australian Rules those three are married with convincing power. It ultimately manages to emphasise just how much politics and especially sport underpin and define Australia herself.