This is a warm April day of a movie, perfectly suited for a season that finds most of us in a dreamy, erotically suggestible state in which our higher critical faculties are beclouded by pheromones and plant pollen. I’m betting that director Croghan will someday make films with more depth and substance, but for now the 25-year-old Australian is trading heavily on her youthful assets of charm, vulnerability, and disarming earnestness in matters of love and art. Her self-penned screenplay obsessively quotes intellectual heavyweights such as Nietzsche and Kundera, but these references come off as pretentious undergraduate bluffing. Love’s real heartbeat is the sheer likability of its attractive young cast and the earnest naïveté with which they reach (through obsessive movie fandom, endless conversation, and polymorphic romantic pairings) for insights just beyond their grasp. The principals are all Aussie college students pursuing elusive goals that range from perfect, soul-uniting love to successful transfer from one academic department to another. Though a great deal of structural complexity is introduced into these parallel plotlines, the results play out in a way that recalls TV sitcoms and Woody Allen (whose style has heavily influenced Croghan’s) more than Chekhov. Still, it’s hard not to be moved by the universality of human feelings that are as “deep” in their own way as the highbrow art the director fetishistically invokes. The most endearing characters are Mia and Danni (O’Connor and Mitchell), two lipstick lesbians who are hitting a rocky patch in their relationship. O’Connor, whose dark features and perpetually ironic expression recall both Janeane Garofalo and Parker Posey, is in a perpetual dither, yet somehow retains an intrinsic quality of groundedness that makes her everyone else’s confidante, mentor, or best bud. Michael (Day), a shy, introverted guy questing vainly for all those great girls and cool friends rumored to exist at university, is another character who’s sure to evoke wistful empathy. I’m not spending much time on plot summary because, frankly, the story’s details are not all that interesting or crucial to the enjoyment of Love and Other Catastrophes. More representative of what’s good about this film is a lovely late scene in which Mia and Danni wake up in each other’s arms as Nico sings “Sunday Morning” in the background. The image is as warm and tranquil as light streaming through a stained glass window: perfect, simple, and moving in a way that defies analysis. For now, that’s all Croghan needs to draw us into her art.
This article appears in April 25 • 1997 (Cover).