Squint a little, and Strange Creatures is Australia’s answer to Little Miss Sunshine. This indie film may not feature a dance-off to ‘Super Freak’, but it is a road trip drama about a dysfunctional family with plenty of sweetness and light.
It even has its own unconventional vehicle, swapping out the cult-classic’s yellow Volkswagen van for a hearse.
Inspired loosely by writer and first-time feature director Henry Boffin’s tense relationship with a brother he rarely speaks to, Strange Creatures follows the Taylors, two 30-something brothers driving from Melbourne to their childhood farm in Narrabri, NSW to scatter their mother’s ashes.
Nate (Riley Nottingham, who co-created and starred in Boffin’s comedy series Metro Sexual) has been acting as caretaker for his mother in Melbourne, while estranged older brother Ged (Johnny Carr; Wellmania, Five Bedrooms) lives in Perth, having banished himself to the mines after his last relationship imploded.
Nate breaks years of silence by asking Ged to come home for their mother’s (Lyn Pierse) 68th birthday, sensing the end is soon to come. Surprisingly, he shows up, the day ending in tears.
Strange Creatures screened at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, as part of Queer Screen’s involvement in the Goes to Cannes program. (Bonsai Films)
When she dies (that very night!), Nate conceives of a quirked-up adventure of healing. While the two eat lunch at a highway rest stop, he not-so subtly mentions taking a class in kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold lacquer.
“It’s a bit like you and me,” he says. “I thought this trip could be kintsugi for us.”
But anyone with a fractured family knows that the tidy monologues and meaningful silences of indie cinema are hard to replicate in real life. As a result, Strange Creatures is somewhere between a throwback to the big-hearted, quirk-driven indies of the 00s, and a much darker drama. Maybe that’s because Nate, clearly the Boffin surrogate, isn’t the protagonist: Instead, Strange Creatures belongs to Ged.
The two brothers are night and day. Nate is a sensitive, put-together pansexual in tight jeans with a gentle demeanour and a sweet funeral director boyfriend (hence the hearse). And Ged, on paper, embodies “toxic Australian masculinity”. He’s largely laconic, but when he does speak, he’s fond of accentuating a broad accent Nate has lost entirely. His sentences are as short as possible, his voice gravelly and words constantly clipped, bored by his own bullshit. Instead, Ged expresses himself through punch-ups, sudden screams of swear words and kicking over bins.
Strange Creatures centres on the two brothers, but on the sidelines is cousin Gretchen (right, Sophie Ross), who looks after her ailing mum (left, Francesca Waters). (Bonsai Films)
He lives a numbed life, washing out all feelings with alcohol, drugs and, amusingly, a near-constant pumping of reggae (“Happy music, isn’t it?”, he says with frustration). Ged could feel hollow in another actor’s hands, but Carr’s eyes radiate a rich inner pain: It’s a deeply moving, heartbreaking performance.
Ged’s not exactly a dream road trip companion, but his bad mood doesn’t stink up the film, even if, at first, it’s hard to have much sympathy for him. Early on, he explodes upon learning Nate is dating a man, giving him a black eye soon after – though, as Nate says, it’s not “about” his sexuality as much as it is Ged’s anger at his happiness and ability to move on from the past.
Strange Creatures isn’t as clear cut as Nate = good, Ged = bad, as the reason for their split reveals itself (perhaps a little too slowly in a desire to have an end-third twist, but we get there). Ged is reluctant to get deep when Nate suggests they talk about “things”, including their difficult, stern dad.
There’s an unspoken fact underneath the road trip: Ged easily could have said no, suggesting that he is, in his own way, attempting to reach out to his brother. (Bonsai Films)
Nottingham has a hard job: Nate is uptight, judgemental and, as Ged calls him, a “stick in the mud”. But he’s never a pain to watch, a testament to how real and, by the film’s end, nuanced the Taylors’ relationship feels, thanks to Carr and Nottingham.
Understandably for a first feature, Strange Creatures’ filming can be a little more pragmatic than artful, but there are some lovely motifs and framing throughout.
Regional Victoria makes for a beautiful backdrop, as do quaint, small-town bakeries and motel pools, their idyllic charm in contrast to the duo’s iciness – the dream trip Nate hoped for always lingers, dirtied by their presence.
As they travel through arid, dry landscapes, there are pockets of green: hijinks and hard conversations go hand-in-hand, with laugh-out-loud moments peppered throughout when Nate stops playing mother and lets himself have fun.
The brothers are almost always in split frame, one out of focus. In the many car scenes, cinematographer Jonathan Haynes largely shows each man separately, with side-profile shots filmed from the other’s perspective.
Henry Boffin told Queer Screen that he hopes Strange Creatures “inspires people to start talking more openly about mental health struggles within family structures”. (Bonsai Films)
It’s there they have their best conversations, Haynes capturing how a car offers both closeness and distance at once, the brothers staring ahead rather than at each other.
It’s not signposted via a title credit, but the film’s name comes from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, where a character remarks: “What strange creatures brothers are!”.
Riley Boffin’s debut feature lingers in that truth, presenting a quirky Little-Miss-Sunshine-esque road trip that veers into a more dramatic, honest and, frankly, more exciting direction.
Strange Creatures is in cinemas now.
