No. 40 (2021) I BLAME SOCIETY. MAY 19th.

 

Film No. 40 (2021)  May 19th.  6:45 PM  Cinema 5 LUNA,  Leederville. 

"I just can't sit back and wait for some guy to give me permission to make a movie. No one wants to make a movie as much as you want to make one yourself" (Gillian's opening monologue to camera, setting in motion this dark, funny movie).

The idea of a young film-maker pitching ideas and then becoming sick and tired of the way she is treated by film executives, thus taking fate into her own hands, is tantalizing.

So, does the charismatic Gillian Horvat Wallace nail it with her low budget I BLAME SOCIETY? Does she what! She executes this personal project so well film executives are likely to be beating a path to her door in coming months. This personal "little" revenge film has charisma and Wallace has a screen presence that suggests she will have choices as to which side of the camera she stands on. Given the promotional interviews she has given, she has a firm idea about her creative trajectory.

Gillian, playing herself, is the central character in her role as a serial killer. It is her film, the one she has been pitching to studios. We are an audience to her antics because it was suggested to her, once, that she would be good at murder. So maybe she would, but is it just an idea for a film? A fictional film that would gain studio backing and would thus launch her career? Or, was the screening of her pitch the actual depiction of murders she had carried out? Will the executives believe in her project? And what happens if they don't? All will be revealed, that is if you decide SOCIETY appeals to your curiosities.  

The film's clever trailer appealed to me. It asks all the questions I raise. I for one was keen to unravel Horvat Wallace's gruesome but funny film. There are plenty of others who are finding her a force to be reckoned with, and that's with a camera in hand, not a knife! 10GUMS.