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Love And Other Catastrophes

1996, Movie, R, 79 mins

LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES
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An exuberant and supremely unselfconscious first film about five Melbourne college students and the various crises that befall them during one momentous day. Cocksure Mia (Frances O'Connor, Parker Posey's doppelganger Down Under) needs to change departments if she wants to continue studying with her favorite professor, but she's left it to the last possible minute, and everything that can go wrong does. Even her normally docile girlfriend Danni (Radha Mitchell) gets difficult, dumping her and taking up with someone else. Meanwhile, Mia's roommate Alice (Alice Garner), a procrastinating perfectionist, works up the nerve to make a date with studly Ari (Matthew Dyktynski), and shy medical student Michael (Matt Day) develops a hopeless crush on Alice. Director/cowriter Emma-Kate Croghan sweetly captures the self-absorption of college students (the sort for whom a favorite teacher's defection to the Sorbonne is a life-shattering betrayal), without ever slipping into the smug self-importance of KICKING AND SCREAMING or WITH HONORS. The movie is in the best sense of the word artless (there's not an hommage in sight), and its occasional missteps -- like a ham-fisted parody of partisan film students -- do little to undermine its charms. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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