Year:  2023

Director:  Susie Dee, Trudy Hellier

Rated:  18+

Release:  April 1, 2023

Running time: 75 minutes

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:
Nicci Wilks, Sarah Ward, Peta Brady

Intro:
… one of the most confronting films to be made in Australia for years.

Shit is proof of how essential independent cinema is in Australia. A micro-budget feature which was crowdfunded and filmed for $68K, is one of the most confronting films to be made in Australia for years.

Based on Patricia Cornelius’ award winning play of the same name and directed by Susie Dee and Trudy Hellier, Shit is the story of three women who are locked in a cage after a crime. The cage is both real and metaphorical because the three women have been locked in a cycle of violence and abuse since they were born. They came out “fucked” and “shit” and violence and internalised and externalised degradation are all they’ve ever known.

Sam (Peta Brady), Bobby (Sarah Ward), and Billy (Nicci Wilks) are not the kind of women you hope to encounter. Brought up in a brutal foster system with group homes and often violent families, where they have encountered everything from psychological violence, to physical violence, to rape, the women are as hard as they come.

The world is shit, and they are shit too – it’s all that they know.

Shit begins with showing urban decay around Melbourne, which moves into a close-up of a lock of hair. Then we see the trio in the cage. We don’t know who has put them there, it certainly isn’t a traditional holding cell, but over time we learn how they have always been caged, asked to ponder their “fuck the world” attitude, and consider our own prejudices when wondering if a cage is the best place for them.

On a train going to a party, they deliberately make other passengers uncomfortable. They scream their “otherness” to the world and desperately hope someone is listening. No one has listened to their stories before, so they’ve learned to stop telling them in a language that polite society will accept. They seek out oblivion through sex, drugs, and violence.

Susie Dee directs the segments in the cage, which come directly from Cornelius’ play. Hellier directs the outside scenes, such as the party they attend and the unsettling scenes on the trains and platforms around Melbourne. The directors hoped to achieve a melding of the theatrical with the cinematic and have done so with consummate skill. While the cage scenes act as a character study for the trio, the outside scenes give a sense of the chaos and cruelty of their world (and ours).

Billy flirts with a man, Craig (Sam O’Reilly) at a party. She doesn’t speak to him, just makes eye contact while dancing. His girlfriend Sandra (Emilie Bloom) objects and Craig beats her bloody – all the while Billy watches with elation. Billy, Bobby, and Sam want to bask in the afterglow of the violence, so they choose a victim, Jane on the train home. We don’t see what they did to her exactly, but we do see them menace her and the bruises on their knuckles and blood from the aftermath.

Billy is the hardest case of them all, a kind of ringleader. Bobby is more circumspect, and Sam is the most emotional – she actually feels bad for what has happened. The three of them reveal the circumstances of their lives. A pregnancy at twelve, getting picked up for sex with random strangers at fifteen, being sexually abused at the age of ten. These women are hard-bitten and systematically seen as beyond redemption. Are they the equivalent of wild dogs that should be kept away from people, or are they the end result of years of systemic and social neglect?

What is certain is that they love and depend on one another. The family they have formed – although deeply dysfunctional – is all they have. They snipe at and taunt each other, but they only know life as a trio. Bobby wants to unsex herself (being a woman has been a curse to her). Sam wants simple things like a stable roof over her head and maybe one day a baby to love. Billy just wants Bobby and Sam to always be with her.

Patricia Cornelius’ script begs the audience to consider how violence continually begets violence, and Dee and Hellier’s expressive direction in conjunction with cinematographer Sky Davies’ work, leaves a lasting and visceral visual impression. The lead performances are blistering in their intensity, although sometimes the fact that it was a play becomes noticeable and slightly lifts the audience out of the naturalism of the acting.

Shit is a chilling piece of art that begs empathy for those who barely have any left for themselves. The women are a menace, of that there is no doubt, but what if there was something that could have changed that before they ended up in their cage? Are some people destined to be shit in a shit society, or is there something more that can be done to uncover the heart of the human living in an ineffectual system? If the world wants them to be shit, then shit they will be.

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