Ride Like A Girl

Synopsis: The true story of Michelle Payne (Teresa Palmer) the first female jockey to ride a Melbourne Cup winner.

Australia has more than its fair share of horse movies - The Man From Snowy River (1982/1988), The Light Horsemen (1987), The Silver Brumby (1993), Hammers Over The Anvil  (1994) come immediately to mind not to mention, of course, 1983’s Phar Lap, clips from which are seen on the Payne’s television early in the film. Well-known Australian actor Rachel Griffiths’ debut as a director joins this qualitatively mixed stable with a cleverly-crafted crowd-pleaser that should go straight into the winners' circle.

Not that you’d assume this at the outset. Opening with a home movie sequence and voice-over that establishes the film’s “true story” bona fides the film launches into Michelle’s back story as the youngest of ten siblings brought up in country Victoria by her horse racing father, Paddy (Sam Neill).  Mum died an untimely death when Michelle was just a baby, leaving the stoical paterfamilias to bring up the rowdy  brood, including Stevie, who has Down’s Syndrome, single-handedly. They live and breathe horses,  Michelle, the youngest, is always struggling to be heard. Yadda yadda. Although it looks good, indeed a little too good, it’s formulaic stuff laid on with a trowel and I was beginning to doubt my staying power (if Neill had called Michelle “little girl” once more I would have screamed).

But then the story jumps forward to Michelle’s teenage years and Teresa Palmer enters the frame, the family, with the exception of Stevie and Dad drop into the distant background and the film.so to speak, finds it legs as a story of spirited determination and ultimately,quietly confidant triumph over considerable odds.  With this template in mind writers Andrew Knight and Elise McCredie shape Michelle’s life into a compelling narrative with a testing share of disappointment and tragedy.

Palmer, who is on screen for most of the film acquits herself ably, striking a winning balance between grace and tenacity so that despite her screen star good looks we are convinced by her Michelle. The still-handsome Neill brings his typically irresistible charm to his role as the old-school, real-men-don’t-have-feelings, aphoristic father whose love Michelle wants so badly, whilst Stevie Payne, playing himself, performs his part seemingly effortlessly.

Griffiths chooses to keep a tight rein (it was too much of a temptation) on her material and, indeed, give it quite a high-gloss finish and that may not sit easy with some viewers who might want more reality in their real life stories. Despite the overall buffing the integration between real life footage of race events and re-staged footage is seamlessly handled and, in particular, we get a telling, at least for those of us who have never been to a racetrack, view of the race scrum. In that respect the film will work better for those who, like me, can be won over by the well-honed and, frankly-speaking, unreservedly sentimental treatment of Michelle’s story and accept the facts as more pre-text than end-goal (I admit to tearing up more than once including for one wickedly delicious “gotcha” scene towards the film’s end). In this spirit Griffiths is ably assisted by David Hirschfelder’s lush music and Martin McGrath’s burnished cinematography. 

Ride Like A Girl is old-fashioned fare, purpose-built to entertain. For Australian film, better known for its angst and alienation, that’s an unusual, but not a bad, thing.

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