WHAT sort of setting for a feature film do you reckon a day in a Footscray pawnshop would be?

Actually, quite effective. Damian Hill’s screenplay, sometimes flawed but not greatly thereby damaged, provides director Paul Ireland with no real plot in the traditional sense as it introduces a collection of losers and bottom feeders.

Les (John Brumpton) can calculate at a glance the potential profit on anything. His customers have their own tales to tell, seldom joyous, intensely human and inevitably pathetic.

A middle-class woman (Kerry Armstrong) comes in to enquire whether her errant son has pawned her jewellery and if he ever comes in again will Les please phone her. A well-built thug wanting to borrow $9000 on a Breitling watch gets stroppy and physical. A pretty young woman from the local bookstore needs a repair to her spectacles and Les tells Danny (Damian Hill) to look after her. Someone wants a gun. Two unemployed, probably unemployable, guys struggle to make a half serve of lunch go further. The Asian girl from the takeaway gives Les a little light relief more physical than emotional. A bookshop employee leaves work hinting at a wild night out but knows it won’t happen.

“Pawno” is a collection of vignettes that took four weeks to film for a reputed budget of $12,000. It’s a bit rough. It’s inclined to telegraph its intentions. But neither of those qualities diminishes its acceptability.

At Palace Electric