Strange Fits Of Passion

Television writer/director/actor Elise McCredie's debut feature film has some charm in the romantic comedy stakes but it is limited by the conventionality of both the conception and execution of its story and some misguided casting.

Fundamentally it is difficult to believe that anyone as cute as Michela Noonan would have trouble loosing her virginity and Ms Noonan is not skilled enough or has not been given the right material or guidance to convince us otherwise. "She" (the symbolic moniker given to the central character) is a University of Melbourne undergrad caught between old-fashioned romantic fantasies and feminist bolshiness.  She works in a Carlton second-hand bookshop (of course), lives in a share house with a gaggle of people who are all having sex furiously (of course), one of whom is a gay young man with whom she shares her emotional travails (of course). McCredie's script takes her protagonist through a number of predictable brief encounters, with only the one, that with Josh (Samuel Johnson), being particularly credible, and depends for its humour upon knowing digs at her character's critical theory-inflected pseudo-sophistication and the usual assortment of awkward young woman gaffes as She attempts to work her mojo on whomsoever She considers suitable candidates to perform the time-honoured deed.

The film shifts gear from comedy to tragedy in its later stage, a technique presumably intended to generate some emotional upheaval in the audience but which only serves to skew the mood of the film and ends up in any case, being glossed over. Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young and this film is a fitting testament to that saw. 

 

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