Rachel Griffiths’ directorial debut feels less like a heartwarming tale of triumph and more like a thinly veiled advertisement for the racing industry
It doesn’t take long into Rachel Griffiths’ debut directorial feature film, Ride Like a Girl, to be struck by the realisation that this is play-to-the-bleachers entertainment, loaded with Hallmark sentiment and configured with an atmospheric integrity a cut above a soft drink commercial.
It is a biopic of Michelle Payne from central Victoria who, in 2015, became the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup. The film reaches a high-water mark of cinematic schmaltz in, well, water, during a sequence capturing Payne (Teresa Palmer) connecting with “the one” – her horse, Prince of Penzance. This takes place on a beach and is captured in long shots, with small waves and globs of sea foam rolling gently into the shore while panpipes play on the soundtrack. I wouldn’t have blinked if the voice of Daryl Braithwaite had been injected into this moment, crooning that song about odd-toed ungulates running in the clouds.