Strange Fits Of Passion

There's a thin line between quirky and irritating, and Australian director Elise McCredie has overstepped it. Her first film, a willfully idiosyncratic look at love's labors seen through the eyes of a twenty-something virgin, is fun for a while, but soon turns grating before ending on a startlingly tragic note. A young woman credited only as "She" (Michela Noonan) is busy shelving books at the secondhand bookshop where she works when she notices a handsome, green-eyed shoplifter named Francis (Jack Finsterer) stuffing a copy of Charles Bukowski's Women down his pants. She busts him, he hits on her, she panics and tells him to take a hike. She then spends the r...