Windrider

(Vincent Monton, Australia, 1986)

Windrider is a modest, youth-oriented entertainment, the debut feature by cinematographer Vincent Monton (who shot Hostage [1983]).

Scripted by Everett De Roche (Roadgames [1981], Patrick [1978]), it is notable for the way it emulates the American teen movie model more successfully than strained, uncertain teen entertainments made in Australia like Street Hero (1984) or The Delinquents (1989). Specifically, it achieves that light-hearted, pacy cinematic treatment of everyday actions (like making breakfast or racing to get to work on time) that audiences know from, for instance, John Hughes' teen movies.

Indeed, Windrider indicates the potentially winning formula that The Big Steal (1990) was later to perfect: the combination of a typically Australian, whimsical comic sensibility (daggy and droll) with the impulse in American popular entertainment to energise (without completely glamourising or making spectacular) the mundane lives of ordinary people.

Like an American teen movie, it has clear, driving plot and theme set-ups or hooks which are cleanly resolved by the end (Monton has cited Risky Business [1983] as a model he had in mind). P.C. (Tom Burlinson) executes a three-hundred-and-sixty degree arc one fine morning as he windrides the surf; but to verify this to others he must track down the one person who witnessed it, the pop singer Jade (Nicole Kidman). Their relationship follows a typical romantic comedy line: initial antagonism, resistances and obstacles to be overcome, misunderstandings, final rapprochement – with a special Australian emphasis on his sexual immaturity ("I suppose a quickie in the back is out of the question?").

In his work life P.C. is an energetic young company executive of the kind we know from post-Brat Pack American films like From the Hip (1987). In this arena, what he lacks is a sufficiently understanding and empathetic relation with his father who is his also his boss (Charles 'Bud' Tingwell). As P.C.'s helpfully wise and witty secretary (Jill Perryman) puts it, "How do you expect to have a stable relationship with a woman when you can't communicate with your own father?" Classically, all the divided characters move to a "middle ground" position where they learn what they have in common, accept the "ordinary" but satisfying achievements of their lives and grow just a little as human beings.

Critical reaction to Windrider has been predictably snobbish and dismissive. While for Brian McFarlane in Freeze Frame its "mixture of 1950s and 1980s plot conventions is uniquely repellent", for David Stratton its "overall slightness" and "basically rather bland" material is relieved only by the prurient interest of Kidman's "first nude scenes" – clearly a historic event.

It would be fairer to say that it is an efficient, diverting pop culture youth entertainment like many others, offering the same smorgasbord of touristic delights, rock video segments, low humour, ordinary glamour and an obligatory edifying moral message. No more, but no less.

© Adrian Martin 1991