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Clubland is essentially a love triangle involving a boy, a girl and his mother. Like many single parents, Jean Dwight (Brenda Blethyn) is unusually close to her 21-year-old son Tim (Khan Chittenden).
Adding a certain theatrical tension to their relationship is her emotionally volatile choice of profession - a cafeteria worker by day, she lives for the nights as a comedienne on the RSL circuit.
In her prime, the expatriate Englishwoman worked with some of the great TV comedians, Tommy Cooper, Tony Hancock and the like.
Nowadays, her star has faded dramatically. But her Phyllis Diller-style domestic routines still land her the occasional weekend Mum and Dad gig.
Jean relies on Tim for both transport - he has a fledgling removal business - and emotional support.
Further binding the pair together is Jean's intellectually and physically disabled son Mark (Richard Wilson), who takes on the role of wise fool.
Hovering on the sidelines, just out of firing range, is Jean's ex-husband (Frankie J. Holden.)
While John isn't exactly an absent father, the bitterness of the couple's divorce, combined with the fact that Jean blames the country crooner-turned-supermarket security guard for the early demise of her career, means he gives the former family home a wide berth.
Rebecca Gibney is almost unrecognisable as Jean's blowsy friend and workmate Lana.
When Tim meets Jill (Emma Booth), the delicate balance of the dysfunctional Dwight family is upset dramatically.
Jill, a fabulously forthright young woman, is able to see past Tim's excruciating inarticulateness, perhaps because he's such a hunk. But will she survive his increasingly monstrous mother? Threatened by the prospect of being supplanted in her son's affections by this young slip of a girl, Jean sinks to new depths in terms of emotional manipulation and psychological blackmail.
Clubland starts out like one of those broad working-class comedies, populated by larger-than-life Aussie characters, of which most of us have now had our fill. But the film is underpinned by an authentic appreciation of the ordinary and an everyday sense of pathos.
The scene in which John plays his new demo tape for his son on a ghetto blaster in the supermarket carpark, for instance, is genuinely touching. And Jean's humiliation at the hands of a bunch of hip young club owners cuts to the quick.
At times, Mark feels more like a plot device than a genuine character, but the way in which he tethers the family to their personal insecurities rings true. Clubland's naturalistic treatment of first love, which is portrayed here in all its awkward fumblings and adolescent insecurities rather than with the benefit of some nostalgic hindsight, also stands out.
A far from average family drama with a dark and wicked sense of humour.
© The Daily Telegraph
