Joe Cinque's Consolation * * *

Anu's Dinner Party
(No thanks I'll be washing my hair)

What happened to Joe Cinque is so ugly and perverse you might think, why would anyone want to make a film about it?  But that could be said of many other true-life incidents such as this which have been made into feature films and books.

   Amoral people and actions fascinate us.

   Joe Cinque's Consolation was a book by Helen Garner.  The thinking person's True Crime writer - a bit like Truman Capote I guess.

   Anyway, for the one or two people that aren’t aware of the story it was like this: In the mid-nineties, several students in Canberra had a dinner party at which Anu, the host, was going to commit suicide by lethal injection (an overdose of heroin). She didn’t get round to it so then they had another one.  The word was put out that this time, not only will the hostess kill herself but she’ll take her boyfriend, Joe Cinque,  with her, because apparently he’d find life too miserable without her.  Trouble is, Joe didn’t know about this.

  What Joe did know however is that he loved Anu. But Anu was not a mentally well person (obviously!).  Equally as crazy was her intimidated friend who would help her. Equally as pathetic were her friends who knew of her plans to kills herself and did little to discourage her.

The upshot of it all was that she killed Joe, but put the brakes on when it came to taking her own life.

  The film is quite well done. I think the most disturbing part is that we start to become as indifferent as her friends. But without wanting to be unkind, I suspect this is either a consequence of inexperienced filmmaking or just the story itself.  Either way, there aren't many rises and falls or modulation in this story. Interesting yes.  Edge of your seat, no.

  Like the director, the lead character does not have a lot of experience but she is well cast and overall this is an extremely good effort.  I’ve seen many films made by people with much more experience that aren’t anywhere near as good as this.

  The killing of Joe Cinque was a fascinatingly nasty and stupid incident but like Garner’s book this film handles the tragedy caringly and respectfully.