FRIENDS AND STRANGERS
Australia, 2021, 82 minutes, Colour.
Fergus Wilson, Emma Diaz, Greg Zimbalist, Malcolm Kennard.
Directed by James Vaughan.
This is the kind of film that challenges a reviewer, who wants to mediate the experience of the film to potential viewers, but offers great scope for a critic, to analyse the film, techniques, content, cinema references…
And this is what has happened here. Friends and Strangers was very well received by critics, with comments like the following: Part absurdist comedy, part satire of colonial accidie, the film follows directionless twenty-somethings Ray and Alice as they navigate a series of prosaic but increasingly agonising situations.
And, in many ways, this is what the film is – although Alice disappears rather early in the film and the focus is on Ray, a series of encounters and meanderings. He is not the most proactive of film heroes.
And, one critic commented on the films of French director, Eric Rohmer, with his focus on individuals in their context, meaning of life, many of relationships – and suggested that Friends and Strangers is an Australian film in that vein. There are long takes of some very attractive scenery and locations, a lake in the country, vistas of Sydney CBD, the harbour at harbourside mentions (and, starting from the credits and with verbal references to the history of Sydney, 1788, the early settlement, flora and fauna…).
On the other hand, one blogger’s reaction to the film was – and here is an interesting word – a discombobulation of episodes.
Ray and Alice meet by chance, decide to go camping together, encounter and an old codger who warns that they should move on, a meeting with a young girl who is on a trip around Australia with her widower father who is home educating her – and a conversation about Australian art and culture, and a connection with the artist Boyd family. Ray then meets a friend who will work with him on videoing a marriage ceremony, a long sequence in a car, the camera inside and at the back of driver and passenger (and, probably, some will reference the films of Iranian, Abbas Kierostami, inside cars – as has been referenced here!). This is a rather long sequence and, for the impatient viewer, it does get a bit exciting when smoke emerges from the engine.
There is also an encounter with an eccentric neighbour who plays loud atonal music and the arrival at the home of the family, filled with art, which is to be the venue of the wedding – and long, eccentric conversations about art and neighbours – and Ray’s mother coming to his rescue as the film ends.
So, for audiences (most?) who are eager for a story, for some kind of narrative which will interest them and, perhaps challenge them, this will not make the top of their list. On the other hand, critics who admire cinematic experiments (and some have described Friends and Strangers in this way), it will be an arthouse must see. And then we find this information: Ranking in BFI’s Sight & Sound’s Top 50 Films of 2021, James Vaughan’s debut feature, Friends and Strangers explores displacement and disconnection in contemporary Australia.
