Starring: Gia Carides, Anthony LaPaglia, Jacek Koman
Rating: ***
ANOTHER BLACK comedy that seems to be the mainstay of Australian film making, Lucky Break provides an escape from reality that is entertaining and innovative. Although tipping occasionally into the maudlin, it is nonetheless both sweet and dark and, while it provides little food for thought, there is an intelligence pervading the script that few such light-hearted films can muster.
Our heroine, Sophie (Gia Carides), lives vicariously through the bodice-ripper short stories she writes to pay the rent. Stricken by polio at an early age, she has shut herself off from the world, rejecting interaction with others in favour of the fantasies she spins on paper. It is inevitable that she will fall victim to the charms of a hero/scoundrel much like the ones in her stories, and sure enough, he appears in the form of Eddie (Anthony LaPaglia), a dashing jewellery broker whose lifestyle is of the calibre Sophie has dreamed up time and time again on paper but never encountered.
It is, of course, love at first sight (or rather first sound, as their first meeting consists of Eddie overhearing her reading aloud a steamy love scene she is writing), resulting in Sophie taking a rather humorous high-dive and breaking her leg in order to avoid being shown up as less than the woman Eddie believes her to be. What follows is a string of near-erotic encounters between the love-struck couple, as she attempts to disguise her handicap as a temporary condition while Eddie juggles his fiancee Gloria (Anne-Marie LePine), his questionable business practices and his new-found infatuation with Sophie.
Soon the plot is thicker than the plaster on Sophie's leg, but under the supervision of Lewin, the tale never bogs down and the storyline flows smoothly. As each character comes into play and gains importance, the threads of the tale become all the stronger and by the time Sophie and Eddie must face the consequences of their actions, the film has gained a momentum all its own. The complex events unfold effortlessly, aided by the competent cast; Jacek Koman, as the smitten policeman whose purpose is to snare Eddie and woo Sophie in the process, provides a great deal of humour and pathos to the film, and Anne-Marie LePine is the perfect bitchy blonde foil to Eddie's suave deceptions.
Lucky Break doesn't exactly shed new light on the human condition or bring any profound truths to the fore, but it is a solidly entertaining black comedy/romance that will leave you laughing