When a film has been put through the rigours of government funding and large budgets, passing through multiple levels of bureaucracy and having part of its soul stripped at every point, there is sometimes no room for the honest, small stories that work so well on the stage. Daniel Keene’s ‘Silent Partner’, a dark but ravishingly funny tragicomedy custom made for a two-handed stage performance is just the kind of simple stage story that should not translate to the broader scale of cinema.

But Alkinos Tsilimidos, who burst onto the film scene with ‘EverynightOeEverynight’ in 1994, was still looking for a follow-up film seven years later. With only $13,000 and seven days, he turned ‘Silent Partner’, that edifficult second movie’, into an exercise in guerrilla filmmaking.

‘The first time I ever walked into a greyhound track and went into the bookie ring, to me it felt like a Fellini movie,’ says Tsilimidos. ‘The cast of characters that existed just at this one meeting, for me it was a place where I thought I really would love to go some day and explore in film.’

‘Silent Partner’ is the story of two no-hopers, the kind everybody knows who fall for every moneymaking scam, Bill (Syd Brisbane) and John (David Field). When John runs into racing kingpin Alex Silver at the greyhound track, he somehow agrees to covertly race his dog, while he and his best mate look after and train him — it’s a no-lose situation and John is too desperate to ask questions. Silver is an eerie, unseen presence in the film, and his dog, named Silent Partner in his honour, tests the limits of Bill and John’s friendship, as their world crumbles and they realise Alex Silver’s game isn’t entirely honest.

‘It was the story itself that ultimately drew me in,’ Tsilimidos says. ‘I was drawn to the way Daniel was able to write truth of characters. What I found appealing was the fact that it was just two characters that would drive the movie. There’s not a lot of action, but god, it’s an enormous journey for those two men.’

David Field and Syd Brisbane have inhabited these characters on and off since a stage reading four y ears ago, and their incredibly natural performances and interactions are at the heart of the film’s most noticeable feature: its honesty.

‘There’s a beautiful chemistry that exists between David and Syd as human beings,’ he says, eand it’s a chemistry that we utilised for the film. I just can’t imagine any other Bill or John than those two.

‘The honesty is inherent in the writing, so I didn’t want to put the rigours of film adaptation to it. I thought the beauty of the piece needed to exist.’

The story was kept hidden from the three-person crew, forcing them to capture Bill and John’s lives in an almost documentary style. As there was no budget for extras, and the team couldn’t afford to get the greyhound track closed, they had to work out how to film without the regular punters staring at the camera. Easy — start filming five minutes before a race, and nobody cares what you do.

‘You learn that by going there and spending time watching people,’ laughs Tsilimidos. ‘Part of our rehearsal process was actually putting David and Syd, in character, in amongst the punters for at least a month before we started filming. The regular crowd, and they are a very regular crowd, eventually just accepted them as punters.’

One of the strongest elements of ‘Silent Partner’ is its soundtrack, composed by Paul Kelly, who worked with Tsilimidos on his last film, and Uncle Bill’s Gerry Hale.

‘Paul’s sensibilities have been right for me twice,’ Tsilimidos says. ‘Paul’s poetry and voice is one dimension and then his underscore is part of the narrative drive. We sat down and carefully planned out each section, right down to details. The banjo is in fact Alex Silver’s voice, and whenever the banjo is a solo, you become aware that something is going to change.’

Ultimately, with Kelly’s music as a third character, this is a film about two extraordinary performances from two fine actors. And it is a poignant story about mateship when there is nothing else in the world. ‘Silent Partner’ is a small film, partly by necessity, but its bare-bones approach gives it a raw edge and a humanity like few Australian films of recent years.

‘There are Bill and Johns everywhere in the world, and when you strip it down, you’ve got two losers who actually want to be winners,’ Tsilimidos says. ‘These guys are alcoholics, everything is against them and life has passed them by. But they want to be winners, like everyone else.’