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Kiwi dramedy a showcase for director and star

Millie should be on her way to New York. But in her seat, waiting for her flight to take off, she is overwhelmed by an anxiety attack.

Millie’s attack isn’t just a fear of flying. This is a full-blown existential meltdown that sends her back down the walkway and into the departure lounge. Where, of course, regret sets in.

But it’s too late. Millie will be staying in Wellington, at least until she can raise the money for a new ticket.

Millie had been about to take up an internship with a prestigious architecture firm. And now, with her boyfriend’s and classmates’ expectations all along for the ride, Millie is going to take what seems to her like a sane course of action. She will use social media to pretend she is in New York, while hiding out in her hometown. What could possibly go wrong?

Millie Lies Low is the debut feature of Wellington’s Michelle Savill. After a string of extraordinary short films – and then a career as a commercial director – it’s brilliant to see Savill bring this project to fruition with her crew.

Millie Lies Low gets across the start line looking like a screwball comedy but, like any good local film, it has some troubling and shaded places to travel, before the ending rolls into sight.

Millie isn’t really avoiding her old life. At times, she is actively stalking her own past, gate-crashing parties she might have been at, watching video footage of friends, making phone calls and contrasting what people are saying with what she is overhearing, without them knowing.

Millie Lies Low never stops being a funny and entertaining film, but it is also an uncomfortable excavation of insecurity and anxiety, amplified by social media, as a part of adolescent life.

As Millie, and in nearly every frame of the film, Ana Scotney hands in a performance that should get her international attention.

Playing a character who is written as often dishonest – and who doesn’t always understand her own actions – seems to me to be an almost impossibly difficult balance to get right.

But Scotney’s Millie always stays credible and empathetic, even when we want her to stop before someone – probably her – really gets hurt.

Rachel House is reliably, gruffly superb as Millie’s mother. Chris Alosio (soon to be seen in Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins) is perfectly downbeat and under-played as boyfriend Henry.

Millie Lies Low is a layered film hiding within a simple narrative. Savill and cowriter Eli Kent have created a film that obeys the broad rules of a sitcom and inhabited it with people who don’t always behave as we expect characters in a movie to.

There was a wee local film from 2007 called Eagle vs Shark that pulled off a similar trick. And that worked out pretty well for everyone involved.

Millie Lies Low is occasionally confounding and often hilarious. It is definitely one of my favourite local releases in ages. Go and see it.

Millie Lies Low is now screening in select cinemas nationwide.

Entertainment

en-nz

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282080575717146

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