Tag Archives: Melbourne International Film Festival 2016

MIFF report back #2: The Neon Demon

Neon Demon 1It is easy, indeed, tempting, to over analyse Nicolas Wendig Refn’s latest film, the fashion satire/psychological horror The Neon Demon, currently showing at the 2016 Melbourne International Film Festival. It is a film that doesn’t stand up to too close a critical scrutiny. It is also one that, as far as I am concerned, did not require it as a condition of my enjoyment.

Jesse (Elle Fanning) is the latest in a long queue stretching back into the last century, of wide eyed female ingénues fresh off the bus/plane/train and desperate to make it in Tinsel Town. She has her sights set on cracking the cutthroat world of high fashion modelling. In an industry where nineteen is considered on the verge of being past it as a working model, her non-surgically enhanced natural beauty is enough to make even the most jaded photographer stand up and pay attention.

It is not long before Jesse is taking part in fashion shoots and modelling clothes on major catwalk shows, much to the intense chagrin of other models Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee), also out to do what ever it takes to succeed and incredibly jealous of Jesse’s meteoric rise. Gigi and Sarah are also insecure, bitchy, cynical and angry, further alienating them from Jesse, who exudes an air of clam self-confidence and poise. … Read more

MIFF report back #1: The Family

The Family 1Nothing says creepy quite like washed out old home movie and grainy television footage and there is plenty of both in The Family, my first movie at the 2016 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). It is a fascinating, at times chilling, occasionally frustrating examination of the sinister Melbourne cult of the same name.

Growing up in Melbourne in the seventies and eighties, I have vague memories of the Family getting the odd media mention. Like a lot of others, I was also familiar with the images of the child members of the Family, their matching clothes and blonde bobbed haircuts giving them more than a passing resemblance to the weird half alien children in The Village of the Damned, the 1960 science fiction film based on the 1957 John Wyndam novel, The Midwich Cuckoos.

Established on the outskirts of Melbourne in the early 1960s, the Family largely evaded official and media scrutiny until 1987, when police raided their secluded house near Lake Eildon, central Victoria. The raid kicked off a police investigation into the cult, the starting point and main narrative of the documentary.

The Family was created by Anne Hamilton-Byrne, a narcissistic, megalomaniac yoga teacher, and Raynor Johnson, a prominent English physicist with an interest in mysticism (and the former master of Melbourne University’s Queens College in the early 1960s).… Read more