Smash Palace

This 1981 early Roger Donaldson effort was one of the first I remember seeing from Down Under and was perhaps one of the seeds of my fondness for that part of the world. I admit to all along believing this was an Australian films when, I found out flying home from Auckland on Air New Zealand, it’s actually from the Kiwis. Weird.

Smash Palace was written and directed by Donaldson (who next gave us The Bounty and Cocktail) and stars Bruno Lawrence, Anna Jemison and Greer Robson as Al, Jacqui and Georgie, the family Shaw, and Keith Aberdein as Al’s best mate, local copper Ray Foley. The Shaws own and live at a junk yard (the literal meaning of the movie’s title) out in a remote small New Zealand town and Al stays sane working on cars he occasionally races.

Jacqui has no similar outlet and the isolation is harder on her than Al–he grew up here but she emigrated from an unspecified city in France. Georgie is more puzzled than dismayed because the junk yard is a fine playground for an eight year old. Still, no big domestic issues until Jacqui cannot bear the boredom and finds herself alone and drunk with Ray.

Combined with the prospect of the business going under or giving in to a mediocre purchase offer from an out of town real estate company, Jacqui’s decision to move out until she sorts out her feelings pushes Al over the edge (the figurative meaning of the title) and launches the movie’s third act right into the stratosphere.

While this is a small film, in the same sense of, say, Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi, as with both of them Donaldson and his core cast deliver an excellent result. Watching this while struggling with sleep on the previously-mentioned trans-Pacific flight I had no choice but to focus on the dialog and emotional interaction and, while I admit sleep would have been nice, this was a very decent second choice.

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