Australian
Screen

Clip description

Van (Joe Le) returns to Carla’s (Daniela Italiano) backyard with a woman’s top he has stolen, hangs it on her Hills hoist clothes line, then goes to her flat and tells her it’s there. She asks if he has stolen it but he denies it, getting defensive and angry. Nonetheless they have a chat outside on the street. Van tells her a bit about his life: he lives in a car park, left home because he didn’t get on with his father, and hasn’t been in contact with his mother for a long time.

Curator’s notes

A very interesting scene because of its astute insight into complex human dynamics. Despite Van’s anger, Carla is prepared to give him a second chance. This is partly because she is a naturally generous person who cares about disadvantaged people – as we saw in their first encounter, when she offered him a jacket despite the fact he was stealing from her clothes line (we will later discover she also has strong personal reasons to identify with the disadvantaged). But it’s also because she is obviously touched by Van’s gesture in bothering to come back and give her a top. She correctly senses there’s sensitivity and pain beneath his angry, hostile exterior. In their subsequent conversation she draws some of this out, even though he’s clearly reluctant to admit to it.

The interaction in their curbside talk offers a lesson for scriptwriters: Van reveals much about himself without literally admitting very much at all. We’re asked to read between the lines. His evasive answers – that he 'sort of’ misses his mother – let Carla and the audience figure out his true emotional state by seeing past the barriers he sets up as a self-defence mechanism. The characterisation of Van reflects the film’s determination to show the vulnerability of its characters without sentimentalising them. A more conventional film would tone down Van’s anger and rudeness to make it easier for viewers to sympathise with him. But this film is more interested in establishing empathy rather than sympathy. Viewers are invited to understand characters’ points of view without being blinded to their flaws. As a result we become more deeply involved with them.