An undercurrent of abuse

Tony Fingleton was an Australian swimming champion of the Fifties. He won a silver medal in what we now call the Commonwealth Games, only to forsake a certain place in the Olympic team in favour of a scholarship to Harvard.

He wrote a book about his career, and has now produced a screenplay for Russell Mulcahy's film on the same subject.

As a boy, Fingleton could never please his father, who thought he was a poofter since he played the Minute Waltz rather well on the piano. So Dad's hopes in the swimming stakes were pinned on another of his brood - and he could never admit that Tony was the better of the two.

Swimming Upstream really needs a sharper touch than Fingleton supplies, as the tale of his abusive and alcoholic father and a bullying brother unfolds. Luckily, though, Dad is played by Geoffrey Rush without too much over-emphasis and Judy Davis, another fine Australian actor, is long-suffering Mum.

Jesse Spencer plays Tony well and Mulcahy summons up the sports-mad Australia of the Fifties with some deft touches, but it is Rush and Davis we watch, fighting the good fight against a screenplay that contains a goodly number of clichés.