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Clip description
Tom’s homeless friend Malcolm (Bill Hunter) has been taken to hospital with a stroke. He gives Tom the key to his secret room, his most prized possession. Tom (Colin Friels) rejects an offer of help from Tania, a social worker (Julie Forsyth). Her question about who he is provokes an extreme response.
Curator’s notes
Tom’s pointing at his face follows an earlier scene in which Malcolm, in a fit of the horrors, claims that his face is not the face he knows and recognises as his own. His loss of self is complete, in other words. When the social worker asks the question, Tom White realises he still has one thing that identifies him. It strikes her as the typically crazy answer of a man in trouble; we recognise the logic of it, though. Faces and pictures of faces have been a theme throughout the movie.
