The Pundit

Lovestruck: Wrestling’s No. 1 Fan

By Brad Lacey ⋅ August 17, 2006 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Lovestruck is Megan Spencer’s fourth foray into documentary-making. Best known as the long-time triple j film reviewer and face of SBS’s revamped ‘The Movie Show’, Spencer’s fingers have been in countless other film-related pies over the years.

10 years in the making but only 52 minutes long’which, alongside its 4:3 screen ratio, makes it particularly television-friendly’this documentary takes us on a journey into the life Sue Chuter, wrestling fan extraordinaire, with tales of her first marriage and the birth, ten-year estrangement, reunion, and re-estrangement or her daughter. Oh, there’s a little about wrestling too.

Through Sue’s encounters with professional (and mostly American) wrestlers, we see both her devotion to the sport and its stars, and the surprising warmth of the wrestlers. When Sue makes a ten-week Mecca to the United States, Ex-wrestler and television presenter Jerry Lawler is gracious to the extreme, even pointing her out in the crowd before one wrestling match. Lovestruck is astonishing for its portrayal of those in the wrestling community as real, caring human beings.

Lovestruck’s focus on Sue and Spencer’s empathetic hand quiet echoes of the acclaimed, although overrated, 1999 wrestling documentary Beyond the Mat.

Clips of Melbourne’s own original wrestlers, filmed mostly by the late Vern Sundfors in the 1960s at Festival Hall, give background to Sue’s obsession, but their content is of use only to fans of the sport.

Mostly though, Lovestruck is anything but esoteric. Perhaps more might have been developed on a metaphorical level. Spencer called wrestling a great analogy for life in a pre-screening introduction; however, evidence of this fails to arise in the film. But complaints of the film’s insularity aside, Chuter and Spencer combine to create a solid, enjoyable documentary that never crosses into sentimentality.