There is a fine new Australian film exploring old (ancient) anxieties about being lonely and lost in the vast ‘alien’ spaces of the Australian continent. It’s not quite as good as 1978’s Long Weekend, but it could (should) easily be on a double bill because it would hold its own and provoke further thoughts.
Alphabet Lane follows a couple – Anna, a doctor, and Jack, an engineer as they try to make new friends in a Very Isolated Place. These sorts of films are part of the fascination and fear that settler Australians have had for ages (Wake in Fright, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Walkabout etc – and before films the ‘child lost in the bush’ narratives).
They – innocently enough – “invent” an older couple, who have a troublesome child. And events, as they are wont to do, spiral out of control, but not from the direction you might necessarily expect.
Made quickly, on a micro-budget, directed by James Litchfield, the whole thing obviously stands or falls on the performances of the two leads. Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Anna) and Nicholas Denton (Jack) are both excellent. There’s one (for me) duff note late on, but in the Q&A after the showing I attended, this was explained as the director’s decision rather than that of either actor.
The sense of menace – of being, well un-settled – built nicely. That these two people, who were at home in the city, could neither heal nor build (their professions) was nicely done. In some ways they reminded me of characters in the various short stories and novels of Adelaide’s Peter Goldsworthy – of young adults facing challenges that are simply too big for them (and perhaps too big for anyone?) with help not really at hand.
The key comparison though, as noted above, is with the brilliant and unfairly neglected Long Weekend, another tale of urban types venturing into “nature” and having that nature reveal their sexual, psychological and affective short-comings, and their inability to find a modus vivendi. Long Weekend is blunter, fiercer, and comes from a time (the 1970s) when we didn’t expect lead characters to be able to articulate their feelings. Part of the interest in Alphabet Lane is seeing how these characters DO know they what they need, but just can’t quite get there. The landscape acts as a kind of pulling back of the veil, a revealing of what was hidden (from the humans, out of place) In both films, a kind of ‘ecological apocalypse’ results.
See also this article on The Conversation, which covers some of the same ground (I wrote my thing first).
marchudson.net 
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