"Swimming Upstream" reveals an intense dysfunctional psycho drama behind a competitive sport. It is as moving about a macho male athletic culture, here focused on swimming, as "Friday Night Lights" was about football, particularly as dysfunctionally fueled by alcohol.
Geoffrey Rush gives a searing performance as an alcoholic patriarch who arbitrarily plays his sons against each other for his attention and approval.
Judy Davis, who usually masters powerful women, here is memorable as a buffeted mother drained by caring for five children, poverty and her occasionally violent husband.
Claustrophobic family dynamics are well-captured, particularly in showing how childhood experiences shape adults emotionally forever and what was once a refuge becomes torture.
When the sons reach adolescence the screen is filled by blue-eyed Jesse Spencer (he's in a crew-cut with rippling muscles in the pool so much that I didn't recognize him as the very clothed, longish haired doctor in TV's "House") and the young men in small bathing trunks playing his brothers, in heightened scenes of very physical sibling rivalry and closeness.
The visuals and production design well communicate the bloke culture of Brisbane in the 1950's and early 1960's, from the fading docks, to the pubs, to the locker rooms, to the union halls, that is brutally carried into the family.
The shocked smile on Spencer's face as "Tony Fingleton" discovers a wider culture through his swimming, heck with admiring women in it, is heart warming as I thought that if someone doesn't give that guy a hug already I'll reach through the movie screen and do it myself.
Russell Mulcahy's directing, however, frequently undercuts the power, with unnecessary narration and gimmicky camera moves during intense scenes.
The timetable as years go by is a bit confusing, especially as annual tournaments repeat.
