If Paul Kelly’s classic Christmas song makes you tear up, this film will too

In an inspired creative decision, screenwriters Meg Washington and Waterman turn the “Angus” mentioned in the song into Joe’s nine-year-old son (Jonah Wren Phillips), who misses his dad as much as his dad misses him.

Set in the recent past – an unspecified year before mobile phones – How to Make Gravy is immediately recognisable as taking place in suburban Australia, with its harsh summer light, sunburnt grass and string of Christmas lights on the metal front fence of a brick house with a trampoline in the backyard.

The brothers from the song, now identified as Joe’s uncles (Kim Gyngell and Eugene Gilfedder), are driving down for Christmas and corporate Stella (Kate Mulvany) is flying in with her pompous husband, Roger (Damon Herriman). There are brief appearances from the other characters Kelly mentioned: Dolly (Izzy Westlake) and Frank (Rose Statham) are Joe’s daughters, and Mary (Eloise Rothfield) is Dan’s daughter.

While prison is barely sketched in the song other than the line “there’s sure as hell no one in here I want to fight”, Washington and Waterman detail a rough place where Joe is torn between his destructive anger and getting out as soon as possible to see his family.

Two prisoners who are not in the song – Noel (Hugo Weaving), a warm-hearted lifer who leads the prison kitchen team, and malevolent Red (Kieran Darcy-Smith) – draw him in opposite directions. Making gravy is not just a Christmas tradition; it’s a symbolically significant role for Joe in the kitchen.

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There are only a few moments where a too-literal adaptation of the song clunks, such as when Joe says during a prison visit, “I’ll be out of here by July”, and Rita responds “with good behaviour”. Rousselle seems a touch too young and unshopworn considering the age of Rita’s three children and tough life, but her nationality adds another element to being distant from loved ones at Christmas.

For the rest of the film, it is an impressive expansion of the song to the screen, with moving performances by Henshall, Weaving and Herriman in particular, and restrained use of original songs written by Washington that deepen the yearning throughout the film.

If Kelly’s song makes you choke up, a film full of damaged characters wanting another chance at love and the closeness of family probably will too. As well as a song to listen to, there’s now a film to watch on Gravy Day.