Unlucky Country: Malediction and Middle-class Malaise in James Vaughan's 'Friends and Strangers'

Everything is not as it seems in James Vaughan's ambitious debut feature, an ostensibly breezy comedy in which an aimless young man is caught in a series of mishaps and missed social cues. Despite the inconsequentiality suggested by the film's mumblecore elements, Vaughan skilfully crafts a nightmare world where placid Australian cityscapes and beaches are transformed into subtly oppressive environments, and in which the unspoken history of colonial dispossession lingers, writes Eileen Jones.

Additional keywords:
colonialism, Sydney, Indigenous, dispossession, absurdism