Cause and Effect

An overcrowded car park at the Burswood had us abandon seeing 'Nowhere Boy' at the outdoor cinema in the Parklands there, only to go on an adventure to UWA's Sommerville Auditorium:

to sit;
to eat;
to see the extremes that love and relationships can push you to.

And by extremes, I mean the utterly insane things you will do for a lover, and your own happiness.

Leaving (a French film playing for the Perth International Arts Festival) attempts to put you in the shoes of a middle-class woman who is in a boring relationship with her husband of 20 years, finding herself in a position of falling for another man who is far less well off. For me, it challenged what's considered "right" and "wrong" by social standards, by having you connect with this woman and her emotion for this man, and boldly contrasting it with the relationship she had with her husband.

While adultery, stealth and murder are all crimes frowned upon by society, the film made me think... Well hey! I can't say I wouldn't be so crazy to want to do all of those things for the person I so loved either... And I would not put up with an abusive psycho husband either...

And then of course you end up confused because you'd hope you'd have more brains than this woman if you did find yourself in this position, because she really just fucked things right up now, didn't she?

It's a bit of a Catcher in the Rye moment - and is definitely a film that will just as easily stick in my mind for some time.