MIFF Session #4: MILLIE LIES LOW

Millie has a panic attack on the plane that would be taking her to New York and a opportunity of a lifetime in her future career as an architect. After a struggle, she is allowed to disembark. After stabilising, she tries to get another flight but they don't come with the massive discount she's just squandered so she has to think. The local loan shark back in Wellington requires collateral and time. She has to think again and then, step by step, she finds a way of pretending she's living it up in New York while evading the attentions of her friends and family until she can solve the problems her plans keep dishing up. She is driven but she's also about to learn what life looks like without her.

This fable of denial and redemption works a treat. Someone, somewhere along the creative timeline made a wise decision to keep the signature crisp deadpan of Kiwi humour to the background. I love the banter and plotting of Wellington Paranormal and What We Do in the Shadows that have the extraordinary obey the shrivelling laws of the mundane but the focus here is on Millie and it can't be all laughs. Karen O'Leary does appear as a security guard (effectively the same as Officer O'Leary in Paranormal) but her appearance does add a plot point about how Millie got her New York scholarship. The rest is played for progress of the fable as Millie has some lessons in store.

Ana Scotney, front and centre as Millie, gives us the lot as she variously implodes with anxiety, judges, gets drunk, rages or falls into crushing acceptance. That decision to play the comedy expectations down at the start allows her performance to stretch and we need to be able to simultaneously cringe from her and hope she gets through even the worst of her deceptions and manipulations. Two moments of this turn stand out for me and both of them are quiet. Still at the airport we get a commercial for her University in which she stars, talking about her opportunity, business suited with straightened hair. Cut to reveal she is watching herself on her laptop. Self conscious, she closes the computer lid but we've cut to a wide shot which reveals the same ad is playing behind her on the giant display. She notices and, bound by the attention overload, sinks into her seat and pulls her hood tighter around her head. The second moment feels so natural it could be a happy mistake. Millie is driving with her mother as they talk about the situation and Millie's predicament. Her mother speaks a malapropism, thinking appointment is the antonym of disappointment. The error hangs in the air as Millie's smirk turns into something with a lot more sadness. The difference between the scrubbed corporate action doll of the ad and the wild-haired survivalist she's become is expressed exactly in that instance.

The rest of the cast, mostly young (student friends of Millie's) are written with more depth and joy than you might expect with such a solidly solo story and the sense of the camaraderie and bitchiness of student culture (which Millie herself has played ruthlessly) feels real. Sam Cotton's popular young lecturer is the comedy standout outside of Scotney herself. While he initially plays the Kiwi comedy style to start with he is given scenes later that carry more weight and even gets to be a little icky and weird. The score is electronic and effective in supplying the swelling low frequency rush of anxiety and another motive using a rhythmic buzz that suggests a phone ring set to vibrate, adding urgency. 

While there are clear comparisons to be made with Catcher in the Rye or It's a Winderful Life this film reminds me more of the kind of thing that New Hollywood film makers were churning out in the early '70s, character-forward slices of life like Five Easy Pieces or Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. I would have liked a touch more of the pretty city of Wellington but as with the quirky humour this story is not about that but Millie and the low lies that bade her to lie low. The final moment that really only uses lighting and exposure to suggest to us what has happened to Millie and the characters tightest around her is testament to the message: keep it low and let it grow.