The Love of Lionel's Life

The opening scenes of this telemovie has stars Matt Day and Alex Dimitriades in spotlessly clean uniforms pretending to be truck-drivers at a Southern Queensland open cut mine. Clearly authenticity is not an issue here and never becomes so as we skate through a psuedo-blue collar, romantic comedy/relationship drama of sorts that comes across as pastiche of incompatible parts amounting to very little.

Matt Day’s unassuming charm is the film's saving grace but as his romantic interest, Nadine Garner, playing a young Swedish woman, is miscast both in terms of looks and acting abilities. Alex Dimitriades has the looks but is equally wanting in performance although in fairness the script makes his job difficult. As the writing credits go separately to Tony Cavanaugh and Des Power perhaps there was some disharmony that explains the oddly disjunctive text that rapidly and unconvincingly shifts from lightweight jaunt to tragedy, leaving director Ruane (best known for Death In Brunswick, 1991) eating plenty of dust as the truck of plausibility pulls rapidly out of town.

 

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