He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

Danny wants to be a writer and does not write. He lives in share houses and keeps moving: Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney. There are different people in each; people who do not pay rent, people who never clean the kitchen, people in strange relationships, people splitting up and getting back together, and one who is found dead one morning. Danny sits among them all and fully joins none of it. Richard Lowenstein directs. Noah Taylor plays Danny. The source is John Birmingham's book of the same name. The book is a set of recollections of share house life in Australia and reached a wide readership; the film gathers those pieces around a single character. The narrative is divided into three cities with a different house in each; the structure is episodic and the plot is slight. The subject is the emptiness at the end of one's twenties: nobody knows what they are doing, everyone waits as if something will happen, and nothing does. Richard Lowenstein was better known for music videos and the visual language carries that. The tone sits between comedy and bleakness; some sections are openly funny and some are hard. Who it is for: anyone curious about Australian independent cinema and nineties subculture. Who it is not for: the structure is scattered, most characters consist of a single trait, and the narrative arrives nowhere.