Starring: Kick Gurry, Pia Miranda
Director: Alex Proyas
Rated: MA15+
IN Garage Days, Freddy (Kick Gurry), Tanya (Pia Miranda), Joe (Brett Stiller), Lucy (Chris Sadrinna) are members of an aspiring band with big ambitions and no gigs.
They have a few problems. They are not great musicians. They have a hopeless manager named Bruno (Russell Dykstra). They fight among themselves, mainly over Kate (Maya Stange), who breaks up with Joe and takes up with Freddy, who is supposed to be going out with Tanya.
Then Freddy meets music management guru Shad Kern (Marton Csokas) and they finally get a gig.
Alex Proyas has a background in directing music film clips. That’s what Garage Days feels like, a long a
nd loud rock video. This film got backing from 20th Century Fox in the US. This serious money shows up in the stylish editing, assured soundtrack and final big location to which they got access.
But no amount of money can save Garage Days from a dreary story. Every young person in this film is unhappy. They never stop swearing at each other and sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll are not presented as the paths to happiness, but as narcotics to dull the pain of living.
If Garage Days, in any way, is telling us what life is like for many urbanised young Australians, we should be very worried indeed.
Given the upside down world Garage Days explores, maybe it’s perfect that we never see the band actually practise in a garage, only in an attic.
