Fwends

Walk and talk in Melbourne: Em has travelled from Sydney to visit her friend Jessie. They don’t have any plans – and there isn’t even a proper duvet for Em, although the two young women won’t be sleeping anyway. For soon their sweet, smart babbling is in full flow, moving from the banal to the heavy and back again. Both of them are lost in their own way: Em because her supposed dream job comes with an exploitative, misogynous climate; Jessie because she’s now in a vacuum following a break-up. The hours they share become a space of play, just as their slacker-like movements through the city turn into an observation of themselves and those around them.

Fwends alights upon the diffuse, sensitive realm between late adolescence and adult life, or, as director Sophie Somerville fittingly describes it, “how being in your 20s means staring into a dark, deep, meaningless void.” Yet the film hews closer to comedy than to drama, as analyses of the difficult present are delivered with costumes and special effects, with rap and improvisation. Made without a big budget, Fwends goes to unexpected places – and is also a declaration of love to a metropolis in spring.