By Jake Wilson
Friends and Strangers ★★★★
(MA) 84 minutes
Wit isn’t something you find that often in Australian cinema, but James Vaughan’s winning first feature Friends and Strangers is an exception. Not that the characters are especially eloquent: they can come out with things that catch you by surprise, but often it’s the banality that makes the lines sing.
Friends and Strangers follows Ray (Fergus Wilson) and his misadventures through Sydney.
“Good to be out of the car,” announces the feckless 20-something Ray (non-professional Fergus Wilson) at the beginning of an ill-fated bush camping trip. The tone isn’t exactly ironic, but implies an idle amusement at having nothing better to say.
Ray is described by a minor character as “one of those sincere guys”, which is apt to a point. But in the aftermath of a break-up, he has trouble committing to anything, even a facial expression – to the frustration of his travelling companion Alice (Emma Diaz), who can’t quite tell if the two of them are friends, potential lovers, or anything at all.
Back home in Sydney she drops out of the story, leaving the way clear for more of Ray’s misadventures. These culminate in a bid to shoot a wedding video at a harbour mansion that derails before it begins, paralleling the film’s more wilful refusal of conventional narrative structure.
Analogues to the general approach are plentiful in US independent cinema: Hal Hartley’s formalised deadpan or Andrew Bujalski’s sense of the comedy of passive aggression (the term “mumblecore,” approaching its 20th anniversary, is surely due for retirement).
Yet, Vaughan, after his fashion, is heavily preoccupied with national identity – and you don’t get much closer to the Australian mainstream than a recessive man-child bumbling through a string of satirical episodes while remaining several fathoms out of his depth.
A sense of local tradition is likewise apparent in the painterly compositions devised by Vaughan and cinematographer Dimitri Zaunders, which typically carve the image into two or three zones of contrasting colour (the flap of Ray and Alice’s peach-orange tent is emblematic). Arthur Boyd may have influenced the bush scenes; some semi-deserted streetscapes have a touch of Jeffrey Smart.
The effect is hyper-real, almost hallucinatory – and while alcohol tends to be the characters’ intoxicant of choice, the visual and verbal non sequiturs induce a feeling of stoned paranoia, hinting that not just Ray’s personal life, but his entire society is built on sand. In 21st-century Australia, what could be more surreal than having the Queen’s face on every last dollar coin?
From this angle, Ray’s hang-ups may be more than just personal. When you can’t deal with your past, a mate warns, “that’s when things start to get real freaky”.
For all its quizzical menace, Friends and Strangers is an oddly enticing film, not immune to the allure of affluence and leisure and committed to gratifying the viewer with a stream of small surprises.
As a Melburnian, I’m bound to say Sydney has rarely looked more like a foreign country. But Vaughan’s ability to find foreignness anywhere may be part of his special gift.
Friends and Strangers is in cinemas now.
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