Acquaintances Ray (Fergus Wilson) and Alice (Emma Diaz) bump into each other in Brisbane, discover they’re both about to drive back to Sydney and decide to stop along the way for a night of camping—one of the first of many unexpected detours in Friends and Strangers, a fresh, funny and unorthodox rarity of an arthouse comedy. The title of this 2021 Rotterdam premiere gives some indication of how writer-director-editor James Vaughan’s feature debut unfolds: it takes some time to discern that Ray is the film’s main subject, as he keeps encountering new people and the film seems like it could go […]
The post 39 Shooting Days and One Year of Editing: James Vaughan on Friends and Strangers first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post 39 Shooting Days and One Year of Editing: James Vaughan on Friends and Strangers first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 2/25/2022
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Acquaintances Ray (Fergus Wilson) and Alice (Emma Diaz) bump into each other in Brisbane, discover they’re both about to drive back to Sydney and decide to stop along the way for a night of camping—one of the first of many unexpected detours in Friends and Strangers, a fresh, funny and unorthodox rarity of an arthouse comedy. The title of this 2021 Rotterdam premiere gives some indication of how writer-director-editor James Vaughan’s feature debut unfolds: it takes some time to discern that Ray is the film’s main subject, as he keeps encountering new people and the film seems like it could go […]
The post 39 Shooting Days and One Year of Editing: James Vaughan on Friends and Strangers first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post 39 Shooting Days and One Year of Editing: James Vaughan on Friends and Strangers first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 2/25/2022
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
James Vaughan’s feature debut touches on Australian history and colonialism in an admirable cinematic experiment
Australian writer-director James Vaughan’s debut feature is a strange exercise in tone and atmosphere. For sure, there are characters who wander around and do stuff – but almost nothing of consequence happens. This film is almost aggressively deadpan and oblique, to a degree that’s almost admirable so long as you feel it’s worth spending 82 minutes of your time watching a cinematic experiment. As one of the characters, a videographer in his 20s named Ray (Fergus Wilson), says about his work: “It’s all real, unless none of it is. It’s all smoke and mirrors.” Indeed, Smoke and Mirrors would be just as good a title, and about as randomly appropriate as the generic title it has already.
In the early section, Ray wanders around Sydney with a young woman named Alice...
Australian writer-director James Vaughan’s debut feature is a strange exercise in tone and atmosphere. For sure, there are characters who wander around and do stuff – but almost nothing of consequence happens. This film is almost aggressively deadpan and oblique, to a degree that’s almost admirable so long as you feel it’s worth spending 82 minutes of your time watching a cinematic experiment. As one of the characters, a videographer in his 20s named Ray (Fergus Wilson), says about his work: “It’s all real, unless none of it is. It’s all smoke and mirrors.” Indeed, Smoke and Mirrors would be just as good a title, and about as randomly appropriate as the generic title it has already.
In the early section, Ray wanders around Sydney with a young woman named Alice...
- 11/8/2021
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
Nothing happens in James Vaughn’s Friends and Strangers in the same way that nothing happens in the films of Hong Sangsoo. The people navigating this entrancing debut feature (a lively pantheon of Australian twenty-somethings plus the occasional grownup proper) meet and talk; couples come together and drift apart; plans are shared and swiftly abandoned. But even a non-event can have its own sense of happening, and even a maze of chance encounters can reveal its own intelligent design. Populated by young adults fumbling after a coherent identity, Friends and Strangers behaves like them. It is a film of detours, digressions, and everyday surrealism––one that draws its unsettling allure from the angst that comes when you realize the path you’ve walked along isn’t paved anymore, and the future you’re venturing into will be entirely your own making.
At the center of it is Ray (Fergus Wilson). A videographer in his twenties,...
At the center of it is Ray (Fergus Wilson). A videographer in his twenties,...
- 2/15/2021
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
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