Friends And Strangers

Comfortably middle-class Alice and Ray are trying to figure out their paths in a world that promises them everything, except how to attain it. An impromptu camping trip together yields odd encounters with random folk and deeper uncertainty about their own futures. Months later, Ray still appears to be stuck in a nonsensical dream as he half-arsedly pursues his professional aspirations. In an unexpected screwball turn, a preliminary meeting for a videography job heralds signs of the possible existential chaos to come.
This modern unashamedly modernist Australian film, where form and content fortuitously intermingle, grapples with the confusion, contradiction, and absurdism of the wealthy eastern suburbs of Sydney, where art is displayed as a status-trophy to a ridiculous extent, even as the worthiness of the pursuit of an artistic life is simultaneously derided.
This ever-intriguing debut feature by James Vaughan destabilizes narrative expectations from the outset, as major characters drop out of the film, just because. A surface-level casualness belies Vaughan’s cinematic control and deft handling of youthful ambivalence. With sharp social awareness and humor, it grapples with the unfindable in an affluent colonial outpost. (Michelle Carey)

James Vaughan: FRIENDS AND STRANGERS (2021)