by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
D.C. Fairhurst, Lucy Green, Zoe Terakes, Darren Gilshenan, Tim Minchin
Intro:
… will steal your heart …
A feature-length expansion of writer/director/co-editor/co-star D.C. Fairhurst’s This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, Pickpockets maintains all the fingerprints of that impressive short film. The monochromatic shots of the Sydney CBD give the area a sense of style and beauty that, for those who frequently rush through the area to get the next light rail, does wonders for the local iconography. Fairhurst and co-writer Lucy Green as two rivalling tea leaves are magnetic, and the sound mixing for their climactic chase, using a stuttering AirPod connection as a sonic compass, remains as impressive as ever.
It’s the kind of immediate film craft wallop that creates a good mood in the viewer right at the start, but the real fun comes with how well all of these elements have been extrapolated and improved from the original. The biggest strides are courtesy of the production’s true MVP: Colourist Kali Bateman. While maintaining the black-and-white stock, there are frequent Sin City-esque bursts of colour to highlight key objects and persons of interest, and the grading to make it all fit together is immaculate. From valuables on pedestrians, to the angry red glare of a car boot interior, to golden city lights creating a living, breathing sepia tone within the frame, it makes ‘the other side of Sydney, Australia’ look both beautifully noirish and as vibrant as a VIVID display.
The visual chops, combined with Fairhurst and Adrian Powers’ silky-smooth editing, and one of the grooviest soundtracks of the year full of fuzz-drenched guitars and Babylon-sized horn stabs, give the film a level of polish that not only works as the framing for a yarn all about crime capering in the Ocean’s Eleven tradition, but continues to show Fairhurst as a filmmaker who makes the most out of whatever he has on hand. He proved this already with his social media horror project The Drowned Bellboy, combining the banality of Instagram slop with a sturdy found footage foundation to entertaining ends. And here, while applying plenty of bells and whistles to really bring the adrenaline rush out of the proceedings, whether it’s the joys of a job well done or the split-second anxiety when the plan starts to go wrong, he delivers the kind of production values that Aussie cinema can be proud of.
Of course, without a proper written or spoken backbone, all of this could’ve relegated this to the divisive realm of ‘style over substance’. Good thing that there’s plenty of meat to chew on along with the plentiful eye and ear candy. Fairhurst and Green as Jesse and Robin respectively are aggressively watchable in every scene they’re in. They fill certain niches within the larger crime genre umbrella, with Jesse as the neurotic planner focused on the task, and Robin as the more aloof improviser who is bubbly on the verge of carbonated plasma. But their chemistry, and their individual delivery, makes every word and silent moment of throbbing erotic tension positively sing off the screen. When Robin remarks “What do I change to be less memorable?”, Green delivers it with such moxie as to perfectly highlight the impossible task within the question.
As Jesse and Robin nimbly weave their way through their marks, up to and including a run-in with Tim Minchin in a joyously psychotic turn as actor Jasper LeClaire, the world as written feels just as lively as the world as shown. There’s some mild world-building to do with the numerous syndicates that control various areas of Sydney (all explained in the middle of Central Station for bonus local flavour), but the bigger points all have to do with why anyone would spend their time as a pickpocket to begin with and, in a broader sense, the power of being noticed. The more we learn about the characters, from Robin’s privileged background, to Jesse’s clandestine come-up, even Jasper being driven mad by the spotlight, the script highlights what it takes to survive being observed, and how easily that can lead to isolation. Tying this into a much larger critique of Australian bureaucracy and its treatment of those on the margins of society (hammered home by a brilliantly placed performance from Darren Gilshenan), Pickpockets charges directly at the creation of trust issues that this line of work (or even just watching this film) can create… but only to highlight that staying alone, staying distrustful of anyone and everyone outside of your field of view, can only get you so far.
Pickpockets will steal your heart from across the room. Don’t bother checking your chest pocket; it’s already gone. Sporting incredible craftsmanship, from the camera work to the editing to even the colour grading, and a romantic pairing that lights up every room they enter, it’s as easy to get lost in just how good it all looks as it is in its properly charming story. Here’s to D.C. Fairhurst and Lucy Green, and for them to keep it up from here, because the local film scene would be much less colourful without them.
Tickets to all screenings here: http://www.pickpocketsmovie.com/
