Indigenous Soul
The energy is palpable. When the four members of 1960s Aboriginal Australian girl group The Sapphires step onto the stage of a Saigon nightclub in front of a crowd of expectant marines, they know the stakes: an unconvincing show will cost them their Vietnam gig and put them back on a plane to Australia. Before this, the four women – Gail (Deborah Mailman), Julie (Jessica Mauboy), Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell) and Kay (Shari Sebbens) – have been told that they need to clean up their act for the show. Manager Dave Lovelace (Chris O’Dowd) has ushered them to various Vietnamese street vendors to purchase the sparkly new dresses that add the gloss necessary to meet international expectations. It’s no surprise that The Sapphires pull it off, winning over their American audience with an intimate, soulful rendition of Dave Crawford’s ‘What a Man’.
(Wayne Blair, 2012), like its performer-protagonists, won the hearts of Australian and international viewers. The energetic renditions of motown classics, the uplifting true story and the girls’ sharp banter (both among themselves and with their manager, who doubles as Gail’s romantic interest), along with the help of Harvey Weinstein’s distribution and marketing push, made a success. International media outlets such as were quick to draw comparisons between the film and (Bill Condon, 2006), with the former’s tale of four young Yorta Yorta women who make the big time holding parallels to the latter’s filmic rendition of The Supremes’ rise to fame in the same era. In fact, screenwriter Tony Briggs, who first penned the story for a stage production in 2004, points to (Alan Parker, 1991) as a closer model for his film, praising its authentic characters and social-realist grounding. could be seen to have launched a cycle of British working-class musicals set in declining industrial milieus wherein blue-collar protagonists find transcendence through song or dance, as in (Peter Cattaneo, 1997) and (Stephen Daldry, (Dein Perry, 2000), saw Newcastle steel-mill workers tap and stomp their way through an industrial landscape.
