Joy

Joy is fifteen, good looking, living in a Sydney suburb and ready to hit the excitement of the local shopping mall. There is a theft, a chase, a clinch with a boy, a fight and a homecoming. The hard-edged, choppy cutting allows little dialogue, but words are important: Joy's thoughts during the casual clinch (or is it coitus?) first bring forward the longing and loneliness beneath her self-assurance. Words are there from the start, also, in bold overlain strips of commentary, of parental admonitions and in one instance, ambiguously, possibly, Joy's own words. This highly effective device, as ironic as any Greek chorus, leads naturally to the screaming argument about her that erupts between her parents when Joy returns home. She is, in the end, a lonely girl sitting on her bed, hearing her parents' arguing, looking rather lost. At first this film seems at a distance from the issues it is raising, seems to adopt a position of moral neutrality towards her behaviour, but then the Joy's alienation and the reasons for it start to appear. The theme is serious, but this film is a lot of fun, in its action and visually. Deborah Clay is splendid as Joy, with all the attitude the part requires and with an energy, especially in the chase, that put me in mind of another athletic female lead, Franka Potente in Lola rennt (1998). Watch it if you can.

Joy lives with her family in Australia. We follow her as she hangs out at the mall with her friends, shoplift for fun, kiss boys and tease them sexually, get into fights etc before eventually coming home to an angry home. All the time we see her go through a range of emotions while putdowns and comments from her and her parents scroll across the screen in bold writing.

I didn't know what to expect from this short. I didn't even know what it was about and in many ways that's the best way - to be a total clean slate for a film. The story unfolds slowly, we open with a close up shot of Joy on a bus looking content. I imagine that she is just coming home and is happy about her day. We then follow her through a day where she does laddish things and has a laugh with her friends - although her behaviour puts her in situations where she doesn't want to be (witness her violent attack on a girl over nothing or her mixed emotions having escaped with stolen sunglasses).

This behaviour seems to be driven by the restrictions and putdowns from her parents, that scroll across her mind constantly driving her to rebel. However some of the putdowns are her own, as if she's aware that how she is, isn't good but can't seem to change her life to a way she is totally happy.

Deborah Clay is excellent as Joy. She manages to paint a realistic picture of a teenager in turmoil without being unsympathetic. The direction is superb, different camera shots are used, as is different lighting -the best being the sickly green lighting of the corridor that reflects her feelings about the minor crime she just carried out.

Overall it is a great little short that manages to convey a full story in a short time using very little dialogue. You'll be thinking about it for longer than it's running time - a feat that most films don't manage (most actions movies are forgotten 2 hours after watching them).