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:
Nicole Pastor, Jordan Fraser-Trumble, Stephen Degenaro, Jasper Bagg
Intro:
... unrelenting unease, creating an atmosphere that is equal parts the inside-out rawness of Cam and the surreal creative dissociation of Berberian Sound Studio.
Working as a freelancer is a paradox of independence. It has the appearance of being able to choose your own working conditions, not be tied down by a claustrophobic office environment, and even work from home. The reality of it though, like any other field of work, isn’t nearly as idealistic.
Most breeds of content creators (editors, cinematographers, actors, writers) live check-to-check, and that doesn’t leave much room to turn down work, no matter how… affecting it may be. It also isn’t immune from issues that plague the standard workforce, where hands-on experience is insisted but can also lead to either being turned away if it doesn’t fit a narrow definition of what counts as ‘experience’, or worse, confined to an area of work that was initially just meant to be a placeholder for better opportunities later. It’s a dream job that is often a nightmare.
Freelance, from Melbourne-based filmmaker John Balazs, looks at an extreme example of this in action. Video editor Katie (Nicole Pastor), struggling to get by on sizzle reels and porn, gets a mysterious offer to edit something… different. At first, she thinks that the short footage of grainy, unsettling violence that she’s been sent is just another student film, but over time, not only does she realise the veracity of what she’s seeing, but it starts to both figuratively and literally haunt her.
Pastor does an amazing job at portraying the main character in her first lead role, making her Katie’s thoroughly abrasive mannerisms highly watchable as well as getting across the mounting psychological distress of the work and its effect on her life. She’s someone you’d likely exclaim, “the hell is her problem?”, if you encountered her in the wild, but who consistently shows that there is a reason why she reacts to the world like this. She is the product of a society that gives the illusion of choice in the workforce, but is ultimately designed to pulp and sift people until they will do anything if it means they can make the bills for the month… or even the last few months.
The film craft only adds to that unrelenting unease, creating an atmosphere that is equal parts the inside-out rawness of Cam and the surreal creative dissociation of Berberian Sound Studio. David Chan’s cinematography, full of lingering shots of computer screens mingle with Kai Chen Lim’s minimalist soundtrack and Johnny Varga’s digital scalpel editing to not only emphasise the anxiety, but also add interesting metatextual dimensions to this story of making content out of murder. It openly pokes at the technical and audience expectations of lurid media, with Katie essentially being tasked with taking LiveLeak videos and making them ‘scary’ through the power of post-production. As if reality isn’t terrifying enough.
Freelance hits home for reasons beyond the salacious, with a dark and disturbingly accurate depiction of the modern freelance grind. While it offers occasional belly laughs from the absurdity of this being the reality of things, beyond the 8MM-esque specifics, it mainly exists as a dramatic indictment of a capitalist system that engenders this exact “whatever pays the bills” mentality in its populace. Anchored by a truly outstanding lead performance from Nicole Pastor, it’s a psycho-thriller that uses cramped production values to craft its story of paranoia, guilt, death, and the almighty dread of knowing that the first of the month is right around the corner. Are you up-to-date on your bills? Better hope so…
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