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If there’s one element you must try to include in a heartfelt comedy-drama which chooses to champion on-screen relationships over narrative, it’s an endearing central character. First-time Australian director Cherie Nowlan would have done well to remember this with Clubland. Jean Dwight (Brenda Blethyn) is an ageing, cockney comedienne on the Sydney club circuit. When she’s not performing her phallocentric stand-up routine, she likes nothing more than to meddle in the lives of her long-suffering sons. She is perhaps the most overbearing, self-obsessed and irritating matriarchal big screen figure since Norman Bates’ mum in Psycho.
© Time Out Group Ltd
