While repeated altercations between a student and his vice principal provide Is This The Real World with much of its drama, just one line of dialogue summarises their conflict. ‘I have dealt with dozens of Mark Blazeys in my time,’ Mr Rickard (Greg Stone, TV’s Neighbours) spits at the 17-year-old (Sean Keenan, Strangerland) in front of him — the former meaning every word he says, and the latter visibly defiant and horrified. For the educational administrator, it’s a statement filled with truth as well as mistaken presumptions, reflecting an adult existence spent avoiding his own issues by encouraging the next generation not to make their own. For the teen endeavouring to cope with a new school, his first love, and a plethora of problems at home, it’s an attack on the identity he’s trying to shape, the choices he’s had to make, and the encroaching maturity he’s attempting to accept.
A straightforward tale of teacher versus pupil, Martin McKenna’s debut film is not; instead, the seasoned Australian television scribe turned first-time feature writer/director serves up a snapshot of tough circumstances and just as testing realisations. Mr Rickard may be Mark’s primary adversary, but he’s also one of many figures undergoing the same searching journey as Is This The Real World‘s protagonist. While McKenna isn’t sympathetic to the deputy headmaster’s plight as his attacks and torments increase in cruelty and physicality, the movie is acutely cognisant of a sense of restlessness and uncertainty — of never quite feeling like life and the world are what they seem — that’s collective.
Accordingly, Mark cycles through a coming-of-age journey littered with events and encounters that both encapsulate his rebellion-fuelled search for normality, and expose the similar desires of those around him. From the classmates he fights with to his just-out-of-jail older brother Jimmy, (Matt Colwell, also known as rapper 360), everyone has their own story, even if they’re only hinted at or shown in fragments. At school, that includes Kim (Charlotte Best, Puberty Blues), who’s not just the object of Mark’s affections, but the daughter of Mr Rickard. At home, as his grandmother (Julia Blake, A Month of Sundays) falls ill and Jimmy falls back on his past ways, Mark’s mother Anna (Susie Porter, Tim Winton’s The Turning) tries to keep the family together.
Evoking empathy and exploring universal sentiments may be Is This The Real World‘s aim; however there’s no mistaking the well-worn narrative at the feature’s core, particularly as it continues to find common threads and troubles among its characters. Indeed, trading in shared emotions remains a double-edge sword: in ensuring audiences see several sides to the antagonistic relationships on display, simplifications are often made that not only highlight mutual traits and trials, but emphasise just how closely the feature hews to the teen angst and existential malaise standard.
As a result, though McKenna employs expressive aesthetic choices to partially temper the familiarity of his narrative — and to demonstrate his stylistic flair, perhaps most notably in Is This The Real World‘s book-ending shots — it’s the film’s layered performances that help it to carve out its own niche. Making recognisable emotions feel fresh is a harder task than it might sound, but with Keenan embodying the right blend of brooding and spirited, Porter convincingly conveying the clash of pain and responsibility, and only Stone proving somewhat one-note among the main players, it’s a feat the bulk of the cast manages to achieve.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Is This The Real World
Director: Martin McKenna
Australia, 2015, 90 mins
Release date: 2 June
Distributor: Point of View films
Rated: M
Actors:
Director:
Format:
Country:
Release:
