Probably sometime in the 1980s film scholarship crossed the line drawn by the encyclopedists back in the18th century. Nowadays, if you think your film buffness covers the universe horizontally, from Guru Dutt to Leopoldo Torre-Nilsson by way of Maya Deren and Harry Potter, you're either deluded or conceited. There is, thankfully, more than one single pair of human eyes can reach in the world of cinema and you never know where the next surprise may come from. The last came from The Mule.
The Mule is Tony Mahony and Angus Sampson's first feature film, both illustrious unknowns to The MacMahonian, although research revealed that Sampson, who also scripted and plays the main role, is a celebrity in his native Australia.
Apparently and incredibly based on a true story, The Mule, set in Melbourne in 1983, tells of Ray Jenkins, persuaded by small time crook friend Gavin to travel to Thailand to buy and swallow in small meatball-sized condom packages a quantity of heroin to bring back to OZ. Upon his return, mishaps lead to him being detained at the airport and, as apparently it is illegal in Australia to X-Ray a suspect without his consent, the police obtains permission from a judge to detain Ray for a maximum of 7 days (this apparently is legal) so that his digestive circle runs its course and the truth may come out. Subsequent action revolves around the police's efforts at extracting the truth from Ray, Gavin's increasingly uneasy dealings with the Australian Mafiosi who lent him the money for the purchase, and, the morceau de bravure, Ray's agony in custody, rolling his eyes in titanic constipation due to medication taken to prevent him to defecate and ultimately (spoiler alert) succeeding in besting his custodians due to ingenuity and an extraordinarily resilient digestive system.
The Mule provides one of cinephilia's most rarified pleasures: the consummate 1st feature, in form and content, if the pleonasm maybe for once forgiven. Dead on 80s cheesy clothes and hairstyles [not cheesy as in “cheesy because they're 80s” but cheesy as in “they were already cheesy in the 80s”, with honourable mentions to Cheryl Ladd lookalike defense lawyer Jasmine Griffiths (Georgina Haig) playing beauty in the midst of unsexy beasts, and to Gavin (Leigh Whannell), whose mod mullet alone would make The Mule mandatory viewing] understatedly but decisively contribute to the film's effectiveness.
Cinema from down under first received international praise (in the MacMahonian's book, somewhat exaggerated) back in the late 70s/early 80s, when Bruce Beresford, George Miller, Peter Weir et al came to the fore. That generation long since absorbed by Tinseltown as second-leaguers, Australian cinema, at least for northern hemisphere film buffs, has in recent years been practically synonymous with Baz Luhrmahn. Nothing wrong with that and credit where it is due, but, under as above, the more the merrier.