Witness Born: 'Joe Cinque's Consolation', Adaptation and Embodied Film Theory

Without Helen Garner's incisive ethical intrusions, Sotiris Dounoukos' adaptation of Joe Cinque's Consolation finds itself limited to a representational mode of storytelling that fails to capture the complexities of the unfolding events. Nevertheless, during occasional heightened moments that get under the audience's skin, we are given glimpses of the film's power to interrogate crime, culpability and justice, writes Gabrielle O'Brien.

Additional keywords: adaptation, murder, manslaughter, ethics, Anu Singh, dramatisation, re-enactment.