Australian
Screen

Clip description

Lucy (Emily Browning) arrives for an interview with Clara (Rachael Blake) in reply to the job advertisement she saw in the student newspaper. The job is involves being a lingerie waitress but there is ‘room for promotion’, according to Clara.

Curator’s notes

The strange formality of this sequence in content as well as style is symptomatic of the off-kilter tone of the film as a whole. The sequence is stylised to the point of being dreamlike and slightly sinister – listen to the vaguely threatening tone Clara adopts in warning Lucy that she faces heavy penalties for any breach of discretion.

In outlining the job and promotion prospects, Clara is oddly blunt and at the same time mysteriously evasive. The clear implication is that the lingerie waitressing for which Lucy is being interviewed may lead to a more intimate form of sexual work, yet Clara’s language is peculiarly formal and high-blown.

The sequence is part of a scene that consists of an unusually long take lasting for five-and-a-half minutes. This use of long shot (the camera at a distance) and very long take (no edits) lends the sequence a cool, objective tone, as does the symmetrical way in which Lucy and Clare are arranged in the frame. Viewers are encouraged to feel they are viewing the action at one remove, as opposed to becoming emotionally involved.

The laptop surveillance at the start of the sequence explicitly introduces a theme of voyeurism that is mostly implicit through the rest of the film. The formal style forces the viewer into becoming a voyeur at the same time as it gives them space to contemplate this.