Graceful Girls

When most people think of calisthenics, they think of glorified gymnastics or acrobatics with hints of problematic child pageantry. Despite being an almost exclusively Australian venture, calisthenics is not well known in this country. Graceful Girls takes it upon itself to expose us to the artistry and demands of calisthenics through the lens of some of the larger-than-life characters at Regent, one of Melbourne's top schools.

Graceful Girls follows 26-year-old Brianna Lee as she enters the Graceful Girl competition (the highest accolade in calisthenics) for the last time, accompanied by her ball-busting Regent principal Diane, who paints a picture of what calisthenics is for the presumably unknowing audience. The film doesn't glorify every aspect of calisthenics, nor does it affix unnecessary melodrama on any of the inherent issues it acknowledges; it does well to capture the essence of the unknown sport without being pandering or unfair. While Graceful Girls does feel overly ambitious at times, trying to focus on too many different narratives and people at once, it's bolstered by a wonderfully genuine emotion that captures the nature of sporting obsession and what it is to be an athlete and an artist.