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Patsy (Miranda Otto) comes to visit Boyd (Richard Roxburgh) and Ralph (Matt Day) in jail, somewhere in western Queensland. Boyd thinks she’s pregnant, but Patsy has much graver news.
Curator’s notes
The film walks a precarious line between comedy and tragedy, but it’s played almost dead straight. Matt Day’s slack-jawed response to Miranda Otto’s revelations is about as close as the film gets to ‘comic acting’. The reality of the performances contrasts with the dual-narrative structure, which adds a layer of fantasy. Just before Ralph is picked up by Boyd and Patsy he falls asleep beside the road, so it may be that the whole film is a dream, or a nightmare. If it is, there’s no wake-up. The other film that’s a clear inspiration is the American classic, Casablanca, in which Humphrey Bogart sacrifices his love for Ingrid Bergman for the sake of her relationship with Paul Heinreid, her husband. Ralph does a similar thing in the jail in Queensland – he takes the rap for the drugs, so that Boyd can get out and look after Patsy.
