Friends and Strangers
James Vaughan’s comedy of manners Friends and Strangers is wonderfully awkward, strikingly shot and full of hilarious moments of social confusion
This fantastic, sometimes deliriously strange Australian comedy centres on Ray (Wilson), a low-energy 20-something who makes a living as a wedding videographer. He’s not the most decisive type. He gets tied up in knots when asked about his video work's earning potential. “Remunerative” or “piddling”, he doesn't seem sure. “Nice but earnest” is how one character aptly describes him.
The film opens with the most toe-curling camping holiday since Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May, when on a whim Ray goes on a road trip with a girl (Diaz) he barely knows. When the action moves to more urban spaces, our hero is similarly ill at ease. He’s continually getting into situations where he’s compared with or intimidated by more earthy men; the kind of ruddy-cheeked, lager-chugging, cheerily malevolent blokes common in Aussie cinema.
James Vaughan’s dialogue has the throwaway, seemingly inconsequential casualness of those American films from the mid-00s given the 'mumblecore' moniker. Visually, though, Friends and Strangers is Antonioni-like in its rigour and eye for architectural detail. The compositions are often startling and off-kilter, with the fixed camera prone to missing some of the action as characters walk in and out of frame. Tone is similarly at odds. The droll humour and easy-going naturalism of the first half slowly transform into a nervy screwball with more than a hint of the surreal. The film world is not short of tales of post-millennial malaise and male insecurity, but this one is as fresh and crisp as a schooner of Tooheys.
Released 10 Nov by MUBI