SXSW 2011: 'The things that stimulated me were not in the world," says the narrator in Cry Bloxome’s 'Living Between Fucks', 'but deep in the labyrinths of my mind." Australian director Alex Munt embraced the internal momentum that powers Bloxome’s debut novel in his first film, which plays more like an ardent homage than an adaptation. Adapting source material suggests making concessions to a secondary form; Munt’s approach is more concerned with conjuring a certain mood and tone than anything resembling a linear, narrative film.
The success with which he uses the tools of cinema to that end is intermittent. When Munt took the stage at the Alamo Drafthouse on the opening night of SXSW to introduce LBF’s world premiere, he made sure to remind the audience that it is 'a pop art film." By the end of a brief, determinedly fragmented 65 minutes, 'a pop art film," which is in fact LBF’s subtitle, felt like it might also work as a disclaimer. A stream of consciousness outpouring from the brain of lead character and narrator Goodchild (Toby Schmitz), a disaffected young prat who specializes in beer-soaked philosophizing and dropping literary references, LBF has careless cool to spare. Goodchild’s mind is labyrinthine indeed, though being lost inside of it is somewhat less stimulating for those of us out here in the world.
A chaptered structure might suggest, well, structure, but segments like 'The Beautiful Financial Backer" and 'The Dead Girl" are mostly gestural introductions to the women in Goodchild’s life (Bianca Chiminello and Gracie Otto, respectively). We learn little about them beyond their totemic value to Goodchild, and that he has left the one in Paris to attend the funeral of the other in Perth. Schmitz’s blaring, stentorian voice is a good match for the extensive narration — Goodchild’s declamations feel like those of a mind that has long been seeking an outlet — and in many scenes its urgent poetry actually crowds into the frame, whether it appears in chyron or lipsticked onto a mirror.
There’s a hazy subplot in there about Goodchild selling out to the advertising racket on a project called 'The Love Enterprise," a conceit that is used mainly as an outlet for more of his sublime cynicism — and the film exults in quite a bit of it — about why we’re here (to stimulate ourselves), the nature of romantic love (self-delusion), and why people make the choices they do (panic, self-interest). It’s essentially that one swaggering, epiphanic short story you wrote in university — about how the world was shite and you were the only one who seemed to notice — except with cooler clothes (apparently everyone in Perth dresses like they’re in a Velvet Underground tribute band) and better music (a number of Australian bands fill the rock-driven soundtrack). There is nothing wrong with that story: The world kind of is shite, and the pain of feeling like no one else notices is one of the most acutely painful and resonantly wistful parts of one’s extreme youth. A further injustice is that in order to tell that story and conjure that righteousness really well, one has to grow up a bit, get some distance.
Munt’s heart and passionate energy are evident throughout, but wind up feeling misspent on the slightness of the story and shallowness of the character when they are not surfacing in awkward, unformed ways, as with the peculiar, dead earnest ending. Willing to experiment with structure and take risks to find the right mood — characters are as likely to slip a line to the camera as they are to another character; scenes of what seem to be actual encounters and interviews are woven into the film to enhance its sense of place and theme — Munt is clearly an aesthete of means. Whether he is also a storyteller remains to be seen.
