The day after Christmas. huh? Mine historically tends towards a pretty extreme turkey hangover, comprised of publicly rueing the day I gorged on whatever fateful bird it happened to be, and privately crossing the mental calendar days off till the next one, watching the overflow of bad British sitcom Christmas specials that didn’t make first cut for the event day, and generally slothing about and making little social effort till I’m rid of the annual turkey sweats for one more beautiful year. But that’s just me.

Kriv Stenders’ Boxing Day similarly takes apart a boxing day that is traumatic, but for reasons completely non-related to turkey. It does, however, start out hopeful – with a solitary man semi-neurotically preparing his home for an arrival of sorts; obviously out to impress, until Owen (Stuart Clark), an unwanted visitor, complicates matters by trying to force drugs onto his property. The man, Chris (Richard Green), now revealed as an ex-convict walking the shaky tightrope of parole, satellite anklets and nominal rehabilitation, is at the start of a very bad day.

When his brother’s ex-wife Donna (Tammy Anderson) and her now boyfriend Dave (Syd Brisbane) turn up with Brook (Misty Sparrow) - the girl he regards as his closest thing to a daughter - things go from bad to worse. Dave has already been recognized on the sly by Owen as someone with a dark secret and a shady past. As Chris starts psychologically circling him, all signs start to point towards imminent tragedy more than imminent Christmas leftovers.

Stenders’s film is an economical yet intensely brooding character piece. To his credit, he’s in no rush to work the story on the audience’s terms, preferring to unfold the action in, for the most part, a state of immersive naturalism and total observation, a feeling that the film is technically unfolding in response to the story in front of the lens. The first ten minutes of the film, for instance, develop in virtual silence as we watch someone fixatedly clean their house – there’s no compulsion to advance the plot, only to show a proximity to the people who inhabit it, so when things start hitting the ropes, they feel as authentic as the mundane points of that set up.

The template here is to some extent familiar: ex-con on parole trying to stay arm’s length from any kind of moral corruption that will push him once more towards those familiar iron bars and showering danger is nevertheless pushed exactly in that direction by forces outside of his control – the kind of provoking forces that get a man ready for some revengin’. But the difference here is the immediacy of the set up – a jittery and intense two hours in low budget digital video which charts a breakdown in real time and in close quarters.

The challenge here in nominal terms might be to make this whole shtick into something cinematic – to take three characters in one location on a low budget movie, and make it relevant and artful for the purposes of popcorn, sitting in the cinema, and the whole visual timbre of cinema deal. To end up with something more than a filmed play, which is what the dialogue, setup and characters naturally slope towards in this situation. Stenders’s approach has been tested before, but it nevertheless works by sheer audacity – the whole film being a single 80-minute-plus take that lurches, creeps and confronts the action with an unerring gaze, offering no relief or escape through the contrivance of a cut, and making you feel like you’re observing things unfold under your own steam rather than being told a story. There’s a couple of moments where the single camera take threatens to come a little unstuck – one part of the shot that anticipates a child’s return to the frame through a door lasts a fair bit longer than anyone would be willing to declare as artistic intention, and if you can’t handle film at less than music video style and cutting, this certainly ain’t for you. There’s no cheap laughs or light relief from the escalation of tension, and it’s all the better for it.

Richard Green, a real life ex-con with no problems at all pulling off the look of someone half a clenched fist away from caving your skull in, has the menace and gravitas of someone swiftly spinning out of control, and it’s on the back of his performance that the film is successful. Indeed, much of it was written in plot points without complete scripting to leave room for constant improvisation - a risky set up, but one that has, ultimately, worked.

As a model of ingenuity and storytelling over budget and location, Boxing Day is an astute and affecting feature that should open doors wide for Stenders; a film that succeeds on the sheer ferocity of its direction and performances.

Review by Al Cossar

Director: Kriv Stenders
Screenwriters: Kriv Stenders and Richard Green
Cast: Richard Green, Tammy Anderson, Syd Brisbane, Catriona Hadden, Stuart Clark, Misty Sparrow