Fantastic Fest Review: Body Blow

The two-tone neon, the drag queen villain, the gym bod gang bangs and leather daddies, the token lesbian: There are so many elements of Dean Francis’ queer noir Body Blow that seem formulaic. Yet as this Australian gay tragedy unfurls, it becomes as obvious as the bulge in the pants of Officer Aiden Hardwick (Tim J. Pocock) that there’s more under the surface.

Hardwick – or Hard-Dick, as local pimp and gang boss Fat Frankie (Paul Capsis) cheekily names him – has a problem, an addiction that he’s dealing with through self-denial. It’s not that he’s gay. He is, and that’s the only thing that’s kept him on the force after one particularly egregious interaction with a suspect. He’s actually become the poster boy for Sydney’s special police unit assigned to liaise with the local gay community. That’s an especially sensitive beat, since Frankie has enough blackmail material to take down the entire force. After Hardwick gets rough – in multiple definitions of the word – with bartender and rent boy Cody (Tom Rodgers), he’s the latest copper to end up at Frankie’s beck and call. As much as his partner/handler Steele (Sacha Horler) advises him to just lie back and enjoy it, that’s not in his nature.

In classic noir fashion, Hardwick’s downfall is all his own fault. He’s openly practicing abstinence – leading to awkward conversations down at the station about No Fap – and his tumble with Cody gets him into exactly the kind of trouble he’s always feared. Control is his real addiction, and Cody’s lustful stares and wanton carnality is exactly the kind of peril he can’t resist. Between the corrupt cops and the gangsters with too much power, Hardwick would be stretched enough, but the allure of the bodies on constant display in Frankie’s club and Cody’s come-hither make his fall inevitable.

Francis avoids any potential hints of “kill your gays” plotting, and it’s not because just about every character is queer. Instead, it’s because he takes the conventions of noir and merely places them within a queer context. Steele is just the classic corrupt partner to the straitlaced hero. Cody has the lewd insouciance of Melanie Griffith (and equally spiky hair) in Stormy Monday. And 80 years ago, studios would have eyed Sydney Greenstreet for Fat Frankie. Unlike how oddly, archly hollow giallo knockoff Knives and Skin merely aped the tropes of its chosen genre, Body Blow gives the weight of lust and despair to its noir conventions.

The deepest elements are found within Pocock’s performance as the conflicted Hardwick. Months of channeling his yearnings into workouts has made him exactly the kind of muscled eye-candy that makes him the ultimate object of desire in the community he’s supposed to police. When his partner forces her repressed workmate out of his uniform into workout gear multiple sizes too small, Pocock balances his discomfort with his narcissism. It’s a performance counterbalanced by Rodgers, who gives a lascivious wildness to Cody. Between them, sparks fly that will inevitably lead to conflagration.Owing as much to Tom of Finland as it does to The French Connection, Body Blow is both seductive and disconcerting, less an erotic thriller than an erotic tragedy. In his slide through the sleaziest side of Sydney’s sexual underground, Francis never lets the camera’s fixation on Hardwick’s jacked bod get in the way of his self-inflicted psychosexual agonies. The line between denial as moral stricture and denial of fetish is murky and muddled, and it’s those complications that mean Body Blow hits hard.

Body Blow

World Premiere

2025, NR, 99 min. Directed by Dean Francis. Starring Tim J. Pocock, Tom Rodgers, Paul Capsis, Sacha Horler.

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