The success of The Invite as a buzzy watercooler production is a reminder that films don’t need Greek gods or costumed heroes to get people talking: sometimes they just need conversation. It would be great if some of the hype surrounding Olivia Wilde’s terrific chamber piece rubbed off on The Birthday Trip, an admittedly very different kind of black comedy – more tart, and with a greater sense of unease – though the two films share some obvious similarities. To wit: well-off middle-class couples locked in tense bickering, and driven by the film-maker’s clear love of dialogue being the ultimate dramatic catalyst.
The Birthday Trip is the feature debut of James Robert Woods, who wrote, directed, produced, shot and edited it, signalling quite the hyphenate. Set on a luxury farmstay in the New South Wales southern highlands, Woods has cited The White Lotus, Triangle of Sadness and Melancholia as influences – all thematically linked as stories of privilege under pressure. Like them, The Birthday Trip isn’t interested in wealth itself but in entitlement and the power imbalances always lingering just beneath the surface. If this sounds heavy, the staging is disarmingly accessible and character-driven.
The drama revolves around three straight millennial couples who congregate for the eponymous event. The women know each other – they’re old school friends – while the men are meeting for the first time. There’s the documentarian, Angie (Josephine Starte), and Lars (Luke Jacobz), who works in finance; Isabel (Annelise Hall), who has just accepted a job at ABC TV, and Mark (Ben Gerrard), who works in weapons manufacturing; plus an artist, Clare (Nicola Frew), and her culturally savvy (read: opinionated) partner Jim (David Quirk), who writes corporate jingles.
Upon arriving at the farmstay, they’re greeted by its “experience curator”, Felix (Robert Preston), who lives on the property with his wife, Sapphire (Sapphire Blossom). They are a few rungs down the socioeconomic ladder, and the disparities in their wealth and circumstances provide the film’s most obvious avenue for social commentary. Before long, personalities among the partygoers clash; Lars, for instance, relays a story about how he once “sharted” on a golf course to the more mannered Mark, who looks as though he wants to pinch his nose.
Woods makes it clear that something is off, pairing wobbly handheld camerawork with unusually tight framing, which puts us on the edge. There’s also the question of whether he’s encouraging us to jump at shadows. The group at one point are alarmed by the sight of a person chopping wood at night, forcefully and angrily – which is a little unsettling but perhaps neither here nor there.
Complicating things tonally is the intentional innocuousness of much of the dialogue, which flows well – the performances are uniformly strong – and enters spaces which aren’t all that common in cinema. When the characters discuss movies, conversation drifts into, god forbid, Australian cinema, one character noting that they fell asleep in The Dry. Another name-drops one of my favourite Australian films, which has lingered like a lame animal in the shadows of the zeitgeist for far too long: the criminally under-appreciated Babe: Pig in the City. The dialogue is naturalistic but there’s a freshness to it; a spark that can only come from an indie film-maker working outside industry norms.
You might have guessed that not a lot happens plotwise in The Birthday Trip, though it’s always compelling – there are no flat scenes – and part of the excitement stems from being unsure where you’re being led.
But unlike The Invite, there’s no central revelation around which the drama orbits. The thrill comes from watching very different people pushed and pulled by social currents, power structures and conflicting temperaments. Nobody is necessarily “right” or “wrong” and nothing is necessarily settled. In this type of film-making, conversations matter – and the real spectacle is verbal.
The Birthday Trip is in Australian cinemas now
