by Finnlay Dall
Worth: $14.80
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Emmanuelle Mattana, Melissa Gan
Intro:
For every wince-inducing (and overly long) rap about crashing-out over all the ills of the world come genuine moments of reflection on what should drive us in a world where being and feeling “nothing” have become the norm.
Melbourne is a city with moods as ever-changing as its weather. Yesterday, it was 28 degrees and sunny. Today, it’s 14 and pissing down with rain. Yet what remains consistent, now more than ever, is the people’s strong desire to connect with others.
Whether helping a stranger in JB Hi-Fi find a DVD of The Patriot turns into a political discussion about Trump and JFK conspiracies; a chat with a fellow moviegoer to a screening of Salem’s Lot at ACMI turns into reminiscing about old noirs and black and white films; or like Fwends’ Jessie (Melissa Gan), we’re catching up with a friend visiting out of state and showing them around Melbourne – we’re all looking for that one person we can talk to.
And when Em (Emmanuelle Mattana) arrives in Melbourne to get away from her law job in Sydney, she couldn’t be more relieved to be spending the weekend with one of her oldest mates. Over the next 24 hours, what starts out as a lovely daytime walk, a makeshift spa treatment with dollar store facemasks and starlit karaoke under bedcovers, turns into a drug-fuelled lockout that will test their friendship like never before.
Shot guerilla style around the streets of Melbourne and improvised by its performers, Sophie Somerville’s debut feature is nothing if not ambitious, having the hard task of not doing what every other Dogme 95 inspired VCA grad film has failed to do: not be cringe.
Thankfully, it clears that hurdle, thanks in large part to Mattana and Gan’s solid chemistry. Their performances ground Somerville’s direction with a weight that, considering the toll of what Jessie and Em go through in one night, feels strangely candid. The way Em downplays her harassment at the hands of her boss, her face squirming with discomfort as she instead shifts her frustration toward her grizzled female mentor, is enlightening to watch. Similarly, when Jessie begins to spiral over leaving behind the keys to her apartment – panic texting, pacing and completely disassociating – her fear and anxiety begin to sweat through the screen.
But it’s not all sunshine and ladybugs, because when Fwends’ more scripted moments surface, it feels about as welcome as an intrusive thought. Most of us, for example, are not unused to venting about climate change, cost-of-living or the bullshit of the patriarchy. Therefore, it’s at least realistic for someone like Em to be voicing her very valid complaints to Jessie. However, when her wisdom is littered with more labels than an Amazon package and often platformed in the edit as these revelatory ideas, it’s easy to find yourself burnt-out if you’ve heard it all before.
Jessie is not immune to this either, as many of her philosophical musings are about as fresh as the dead rat that they find on the sidewalk.
Cringe is inevitably going to leak out of any film trying to be sincere. For every wince-inducing (and overly long) rap about crashing-out over all the ills of the world come genuine moments of reflection on what should drive us in a world where being and feeling “nothing” have become the norm.
When Jessie becomes upset with Em rather suddenly over whether science is subjective, it becomes clear that she isn’t exactly the happy-go-lucky and naive tour guide we all thought she was. Her mood soon nosedives, as we – along with Em – learn of Jessie’s struggles with clinical depression, her dependency on drugs as a coping mechanism, and her messy and self-destructive love life. Ironically, it’s Em’s trip that gives her not only the freedom to relax but also clears enough of her tunnel vision toward her own problems to finally help Jessie.
It’s difficult to know whether the film fully criticises or understands Jessie’s toxic traits (her infidelity or her compulsive lying), but everyone at some point has felt like they’re just plain “crazy”. In a world full of monsters, ones that are constantly testing our sanity, it can easily ignite the fear that we might be turning into one ourselves. But while Jessie sees herself as a “a crazy cat lady without the cats”, Em sees someone else, someone “brave”: “[I]t is better to be a little bit crazy and also brave rather than to be nothing.”
It can be easy to ignore all the good in Fwends; cinematographer Carter Looker’s steady hand in a CBD ready to trip him up at every turn, Somerville’s trippy switching of styles in the drug infused pubs and bars of Melbourne’s nightlife, and Gan and Mattana’s platonic intimacy, all help the film to shine.
It’s just as hard to see yourself on-screen, no matter how ugly it may look sometimes. Which is why it’s important to have friends, teams, communities we can rely on, people who truly see value in us, good or bad. Because other people see what we can’t, and it’s often our closest friends who are the ones honest enough to tell us what those things are.
