Slow lane

I love Australia, and I used to love Australian movies. But a certain stiffness seems to have set in. Swimming Upstream has two terrific actors, Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis, and they’re never less than compelling, but Russell Mulcahy directs with a plonking clunkiness that makes the material even more pedestrian than it is. Perhaps he was intimidated by his screenwriter/producer Tony Fingleton, who also co-wrote the book on which the movie is based and whose life story this is.

Tony was a champion swimmer four decades back, Silver Medallist at the 1962 Empire Games in Perth. Then he gave up the backstroke, got a scholarship to Harvard, stayed in America, wrote a film for Rik Mayall and became Lauren Bacall’s agent. Then he wrote a bestselling book about the living hell of…being Lauren Bacall’s agent? Alas, no. The book, co-written with his sister Diane, was about the living hell of their childhood.