Australian Competitions Club

There’s much to hate about Gus Van Sant’s cancer weepie for the Frankie set, but I’ve only got 200 words here. Better spend them unpicking why, even though I have form despising manipulatively twee films, I didn’t mind this one. Indeed, it seems arbitrary to adore the similarly pretentious teen lovers in Submarine but disdain the doomed affair of morbid Enoch (Henry ‘Son Of Dennis’ Hopper) and terminally ill Annabel (Mia Wasikowska). Might the differences just be down to aesthetics – Alex Turner or Sufjan Stevens? Bobs and duffel coats or pixie cuts and op-shop finery? Twilit Welsh beaches or autumnal Portland woods? Depressive, dorky dad Noah Taylor or wise ghost kamikaze pilot Ryo Kase?

Restless lacks the uneasy mood that pervades Van Sant’s Elephant and Paranoid Park, and has very little original to say. But I found its obviousness – Annabel’s saintly demise restores Enoch’s joie de vivre – strangely refreshing. Many alt-romances fall over themselves to impress audiences with their totes-adorbz characters and quotably allusive dialogue. But Restless casts its audience as detached, indulgent observers. Rather than catharsis, it offers a more modestly poignant treat: watching young characters believe they’re the first to feel time-worn emotions.

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