“Girls Can’t Surf” (M) *** and a half

“GIRLS Can’t Surf” is an Australian documentary that tells how a band of female surfers from several countries took on male-dominated professional surfing to achieve equality and changed the sport forever.

Featuring surfing greats such as Jodie Cooper, Frieda Zamba, Pauline Menczer, Lisa Andersen, Pam Burridge, Wendy Botha and Layne Beachley, it’s a wild ride of clashing personalities, sexism, adventure and heartbreak, with each woman fighting against the odds. They were tired of being made the underclass in their sport by “the boys”. They wanted, and were entitled, to make their dreams of competing a reality and to get a share of the obscenely large amount of money that sponsors were putting up.

There’s a lot of talking heads moments in the film, of women being refreshingly candid about themselves, about the treatment of women surfers, about ambition and survival in a potentially dangerous environment that was also great fun.

The surfing footage is spectacular. The bigger the waves, the more so. One of the skills that the film doesn’t spend time explaining is how competition gets scored. You need to be a competition surfer to understand that, I guess.

At Palace Electric, Dendy

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