Joe Cinque's Consolation

2016

Johnny's comments:

Something rare for this year, a new Australian movie.Joe Cinque's Consolation is a true life drama set in Canberra where Joe Cinque (Jerome Meyer) meets law student Anu Singh (Maggie Naouri) and it's love at first sight. Three years later in 1997 a whole lot has changed. Anu believes she has a 'terminal condition' and that her skin is falling off her, but she seems perfectly fine. She is considering liposuction although she is thin (possibly also because she has mistaken what liposuction actually does) and Joe is trying everything to help her including getting advice about a possible mental disorder (really!!!) without her knowledge. Anu decides that she wants to kill herself, but she also wants Joe to die with her although she has no plans on telling him of this. She enlists her friend Madhavi (Sacha Joseph) to help her with the plans for their deaths including having a big dinner to celebrate before killing Joe and herself. Word gets around that this is happening, but nobody believes that such a thing could happen. Anu goes ahead with it, drugging Joe so that he doesn't feel the hotshot of heroin she is to give him (also so that he doesn't put up a fight), but the Valium she gives him doesn't work as planned and she calls it off. Later in the week after a visit to Joe's parents, Anu gets the urge to do it again and with Madhavi quickly organises another dinner party with more guests including former student Tanya (Laura Gordon), who they tell about their plans. Tanya is incredibly uncomfortable with what she hears, but still doesn't raise alarm. The plans again seem to be failing even though Joe has been given an extreme amount of Rohypnol to cause him to sleep. But after Madhavi gives off a blasé response to her inquiries, Tanya threatens to call the police if they don't stop their plans. But nothing will stop Anu...

I've seen thousands of ultraviolent horror movies, but I've found very few as disturbing as the goings on in this real life drama. The murder of Joe is shocking enough but the fact that nobody did anything about it and that a number of people were warmly complicit with the murder is just horrifying. It's hard to believe that such a crime happened as this did, but that's what makes it more shocking, that people could just wash their hands of any wrongdoing when they aren't directly involved. If I have a problem with the movie it is that is doesn't properly explain how Anu got to the state that she does and I think that would've helped more with the motivations behind why she couldn't just kill herself. Maybe we'll never know...

Maggie Naouri film clip (collages below)