2 hours ago
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FILM
Fwends
★★★
(M) 92 minutes
You might fear that a film called Fwends is in danger of being cloying, and this anxiety is not immediately stilled by the first half-hour of Sophie Somerville’s micro-budget debut feature, which follows a pair of young women as they frolic through an unnaturally colourful version of inner Melbourne straight from the pages of Frankie magazine.
Fwends stars Melissa Gan (left) and Emmanuelle Mattana.Credit: Sydney Film Festival
Starting out in the CBD, they pause for a laneway coffee, cross Princes Bridge, where one of them congratulates a middle-aged clown on his dress sense, then head for the Botanic Gardens, where the same character hugs her favourite tree (“This tree is super-spesh to me”).
But there’s an element of misdirection in the tweeness. While the dialogue is clearly improvised, the film has a foolproof dramatic situation at its core: Em (Emmanuelle Mattana) and Jessie (Melissa Gan) were close in high school, but now live in different cities and haven’t caught up in a while.
Spending the weekend together is a chance for them to slip back into previous versions of themselves, without immediately coming clean about how adulthood is working out for them.
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Meanwhile, there’s plenty in their current lives for them to talk over, especially for Em, the motormouth of the pair, who’s been working long hours in Sydney at a high-priced legal firm (and using her wages to pay for her similarly high-priced apartment).
Jessie is the one who appreciates clowns and trees – and at face value more of a naive free spirit, dawdling in the middle of the street and emphasising words in an arch, childish way.
Having dropped out of university, she spent some time in Europe then moved to Melbourne, where she supports herself with casual work we don’t hear much about. She’s also recently broken up with her boyfriend, though again the full story takes a while to emerge.
Somerville films all of this in a distinctive, sometimes disconcerting manner, largely in wide shot – using long lenses to single Mattana and Gan out from crowds and overlaying the action with classical music, while occasionally zooming in or using close-ups for emphasis.
Director Sophie Somerville (centre) with actors Melissa Gan (left) and Emmanuelle Mattana at Fern Gully Health and Wellbeing Garden, which features in Fwends.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
The combination of intimacy and distance mirrors how the characters are both open and guarded – nor is the forced quality of the whimsy entirely accidental. For all the cutesy touches, Fwends is a sad film, hiding its sadness beneath a determined display of high spirits.
If the heroines appear bent on regressing to childhood, who can blame them? While they may be more fortunate than others in their generation, they’re not wrong to think that being a young adult in today’s world means facing up to a wide range of problems without evident solutions.
The oceans are rising even faster than inner-city rents, men and women seem as far as ever from equality or mutual understanding and, especially late at night, it can be hard to believe in anything at all.
Friendship at least is some consolation. But in the end, Somerville is honest enough not to promise that it’s all going to be OK.
Fwends is in cinemas from Thursday.
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