Starring: Maggie Naouri, Jerome Meyer, Sacha Joseph, Josh McConville
Distributor: Other
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2016
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In 1997, ANU law student Anu Singh murdered her engineer boyfriend, Joe Cinque, with an overdose of heroin. Author Helen Garner wrote an account of the horrific crime in her book ‘Joe Cinque’s Consolation’, upon which this film was largely based. While the picture is well made and undoubtedly works its way under your skin, the overall effect is impossible to enjoy – you’re literally watching someone with mental health issues plot to kill someone else who appears to be a likable person, while any number of their friends do nothing to intervene, and occasionally even assist her. If that sounds unpleasant, bordering on tough to watch, it’s probably because it is. The film doesn’t really delve into Anu’s motivations beyond blaming her deteriorating mental state, but the real revelations are actresses Maggie Naouri (who plays Anu) and Sacha Joseph (Madhavi Rao, Anu’s best friend and co-conspirator), who make for a frighteningly compelling pair onscreen.
Anu and Joe meet for the first time at a party in 1994. She’s breaking out of a previous relationship, he’s just returned from a holiday in Europe. They hit it off, and next thing you know we’re in 1997 and the pair have been dating through the interim. A party with Anu’s fellow law students establishes that her mental stability is terribly awry – she’s way behind with her course load and failing classes, her body image is unhealthily skewed and she’s talking about using liposuction and ipecac (a drug to induce vomiting), and she believes she’s contracted a flesh eating disease. Maggie Naouri gives the kind of performance as Anu that you worry she may be typecast as this deranged girlfriend stereotype – her eyes wide, already primed to ooze tears, lips aquiver. Naouri conveys an intelligence beneath Anu’s mania, which only strengthens her misplaced convictions. Joe seems to genuinely care about her, and does his darnedest to get her better, but his efforts with the university and a doctor are futile without her cooperation. After Madhavi comforts her one day in the library, Anu conjures up a plan to end all of her problems by overdosing herself on heroin with Madhavi’s help. Knowing that Joe would try to stop them, their plot extends to include drugging him so as to preclude his interference.
Anu gets her hands on several hits of heroin through a friend, and she and Madhavi try it. Their mutual enjoyment of the drug settles Anu’s method of suicide. Madhavi is also tasked with gathering guests for a sickening ‘farewell’ dinner party for Anu; Sacha Joseph is so calm and so cool, verging on bored, when going about such gut churning tasks that the effect is quite unnerving. Madhavi’s limited success results in a disappointing turn out at the dinner and Anu cancels her attempt, despite having already drugged Joe with sleeping pills. All throughout the lead up, a number of Anu and Madhavi’s friends hear about Anu’s planned suicide, and yet none of them ever attempt to stop her and alert anyone else. Their complicity, while perhaps true to the real life story, is astonishing and appalling.
A short time later, Anu is triggered by a visit to Joe’s parents to make a second attempt. This time, convinced (perhaps correctly) that Joe is planning to break up with her, she and Madhavi expand their plan to a murder-suicide. The audience knows that only the murder part succeeds, such is the reality of the true story. The final act is as difficult to stomach as one might expect. Garner gave her book its title as she found that her book had to be Joe’s consolation, as the results of the criminal proceedings against Anu and Madhavi after the crime appeared unjust. The same name doesn’t feel earned in the film, as there is little consolation to be found. As a tribute to Joe, it feels more like a sketch – Jerome Meyer barely gets to extend the character beyond being a ‘nice guy’. As an exploration as to why he died, the audience never gets beyond sheer bad luck that his girlfriend suffered from mental illness and their friends did nothing to stop her. The film barrels irrevocably towards Joe Cinque’s death, and there is no comfort to be found.
There is no contention here that the film is a badly made one – it’s crisply shot by cinematographer Simon Chapman (the banality of the Canberra locale only underscores the depravity), and director Sotiris Dounoukos has a clear vision for the tone of the film, a vision perhaps most present in the performances wrung from his femme fatales. However the whole experience is remarkably unpleasant, and it’s difficult to recommend on this basis
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