Review: ALPHABET LANE

Young couple Jack and Anna trade the bustle of Sydney for the serenity of the country. Life is tolerable with only each other for company but the sense of isolation swells up between them. They work at different phases of the day which further complicates things. One day, driving home, Jack passes an old timer on a horse and delivers the experience to Anna like he's brought home a boquet of flowers for her. He says he stopped and talked with the man, calling him Joe. Anna, at first incredulous, twigs and plays along. Soon, the pair are living through their imagined extra family, sending letters from Joe and his wife Michelle to each other. Things are about to get strange.

Or they would if this meaty premise had been served with a stronger screenplay. The Chekov rifle, here, is the breaking of the folie a deux by outside influences demanding explanation. This could lead to Hitchcockian tension but, instead, we get a dragging repetition where the new details and attempted complications are just absorbed by the pair and never strongly challenged by anyone who might. A very late third act decision seals this but without satisfying resolution.,

I kept wondering if this was a kind of minimalist thriller but kept coming up against a problem. Jack and Anna have clearly demonstrated flaws but these seldom compel palpable hazard. The suggestion of infidelity cannot sustain the audience's knowledge that Jack and Anna are writing to each other through the fantasy characters. If they were really concerned, they'd tap out and call it. Or, delving further into the shared madness, raise the conflict to more serious stakes. But that doesn't happen. Ever.

The emotional beats are soft and the points of crisis gentle. This pair of amiable young people, having brewed an explosive, relationship-annihilating potion, seem ok with just sipping on it. When one or other introduce serious developments in the agreed narrative, the tension is not there to play it through and they just deflate back to acceptance.

Because there is so little opportunity taken with the potential of this scenario, the appreciably short eighty minutes of screen time feels much longer. This is not the fault of the performances: the compliance scene alone when Jack persists with his invention until Anna understands and runs with it, is strongly played, believable and charming. Between that and the odd point of breakage in the third act it feels like it's coasting. This is emphasised by the pleasant but formless score of humming vocal harmonies and the soporific pacing which increasingly makes the film feel like a short film in the guise of a feature. 

I was reminded of Peter Carey's A Happy Story. There are no similarities in plot but the sense that compliance might lead to discovery in a relationship is a potent recall. It's worth noting that the Carey piece is a short story. I wish I could speak better of this attempt at an interesting premise and say more than praise its impressive use of its location but it just kept disappointing me. I kept thinking, this needs to feel real. Then the credits rolled.