Envy

Director Julie Money's Australian feature veers slightly around the usual themes, but creates an interesting and new mix of character study, role reversal, and sexual politics. The story is basic, but its presentation is tantalisingly different. Envy opens with a fragment from a scene that doesn't appear fully until the film's climax. It draws the audience into confusion, and sets up the possibilites for unconventional storytelling. Envy grabs the attention immediately as the camera settles …

…director Julie Money shows remarkable assurance with material rarely tackled in Australian cinema and shows real skill in delivering a taut drama about the fragile world of suburbia. She uses basic visual tricks of compressing time and space to heighten scares, alter points-of-view, and just keep things moving in general. This compact effort succeeds because it has something provocative to say and a fearless determination to make us feel uneasy in our comfortable cinema seats.