Aussie singer-songwriter Ben Lee makes an auspicious acting debut in Tony McNamara's "The Rage in Placid Lake", a satirical comedy-drama that could easily be construed as Australia's answer to "Ferris Bueller's Day-Off", or "Say Anything". Placid(Lee) has a benevolent anti-authoritarian streak that's akin to Bueller's, and his partner-in-crime, Gemma(Rose Byrne), is beautiful and brainy like Diana Court in the Cameron Crowe-directed classic(incidentally, Lee is engaged to Ione Skye), who hides her obvious feminine wiles behind a pair of unflattering black, horn-rimmed glasses.
In the opening scene, "The Rage in Placid Lake" establishes the pair as outsiders, people who won't join the party; quite literally, since both Placid and Gemma would rather watch television in an adjoining room than drink and be merry like the other high school graduate revelers. Their friendship is put to the test when Placid undergoes a metamorphosis while immobilized in a full-body cast. His newfound conformity with social norms(get a job) compels Gemma to make a life-affirming decision(have sex) as a way of keeping pace with her best, and perhaps, only friend. By the film's end, the pair of fringe-dwellers are happily headed towards a different sort of symbiotic relationship.
"The Rage in Placid Lake" has a lot to say about being raised by hippies. It sucks. Unlike Tim Hunter's "River's Edge", in which a sour former-flower child asks her son(Keanu Reeves) if he stole her weed, Placid's parents are lovable potheads; just a pair of eccentric free-spirits who'd encourage their only child to wear a dress to school. This grave parental miscalculation of judgment undoubtedly is the genesis of Placid's rage. Nobody cries in "The Rage in Placid Lake"; it's not that kind of movie, instead the filmmaker utilizes quirkiness instead of overripe melodrama. Placid is a very unhappy, young man. In an earlier scene, rather than shoot a gun, he shoots film, as a weapon against his parents Doug(Garry MacDonald) and Sylvia(Miranda Richardson), and the students and faculty at his prep school.
"The Rage in Placid Lake" should have received a wider release in the States because this Australian import is a deceptively slack, but effective(albeit roundabout)satire about school shootings and their alienated trigger-men. It has none of the sanctimony that plagued the well-meaning, but ultimately didactic domestic indie "American Gun". "The Rage in Placid Lake gives its audience room to breathe; the movie's oblique treatment of this international epidemic never overstates itself with pontificating speeches, or authorial gestures. This somewhat meandering, low-wattage dramedy is a "what if?" movie. What if the shooter survived and turned his life around?
In the opening scene, "The Rage in Placid Lake" establishes the pair as outsiders, people who won't join the party; quite literally, since both Placid and Gemma would rather watch television in an adjoining room than drink and be merry like the other high school graduate revelers. Their friendship is put to the test when Placid undergoes a metamorphosis while immobilized in a full-body cast. His newfound conformity with social norms(get a job) compels Gemma to make a life-affirming decision(have sex) as a way of keeping pace with her best, and perhaps, only friend. By the film's end, the pair of fringe-dwellers are happily headed towards a different sort of symbiotic relationship.
"The Rage in Placid Lake" has a lot to say about being raised by hippies. It sucks. Unlike Tim Hunter's "River's Edge", in which a sour former-flower child asks her son(Keanu Reeves) if he stole her weed, Placid's parents are lovable potheads; just a pair of eccentric free-spirits who'd encourage their only child to wear a dress to school. This grave parental miscalculation of judgment undoubtedly is the genesis of Placid's rage. Nobody cries in "The Rage in Placid Lake"; it's not that kind of movie, instead the filmmaker utilizes quirkiness instead of overripe melodrama. Placid is a very unhappy, young man. In an earlier scene, rather than shoot a gun, he shoots film, as a weapon against his parents Doug(Garry MacDonald) and Sylvia(Miranda Richardson), and the students and faculty at his prep school.
"The Rage in Placid Lake" should have received a wider release in the States because this Australian import is a deceptively slack, but effective(albeit roundabout)satire about school shootings and their alienated trigger-men. It has none of the sanctimony that plagued the well-meaning, but ultimately didactic domestic indie "American Gun". "The Rage in Placid Lake gives its audience room to breathe; the movie's oblique treatment of this international epidemic never overstates itself with pontificating speeches, or authorial gestures. This somewhat meandering, low-wattage dramedy is a "what if?" movie. What if the shooter survived and turned his life around?