Joe Cinque's Consolation – movie review

In late 1997 Anu Singh, a beautiful law-student in Canberra killed her boyfriend Joe Cinque after months of telling friends and colleagues she planned to kill herself and take him with her. Despite the warnings, no one stopped her. Joe Cinque’s Consolation is the screen adaptation of Helen Garner’s celebrated account of those events. It is a psychological crime drama that examines Joe and Anu’s relationship and the circumstances that led to tragedy. Directed by Sotiris Dounoukos, the screenplay has been written by him and Matt Rubinstein.

So to the back story … Anu Singh (Maggie Naouri) and Joe Cinque (Jerome Meyer) meet in Newcastle on New Year’s Eve 1994. She’s exotic, attractive and seductive and unlike anyone Joe has met before, while he’s good-looking and gentle and recognises a tenderness in Anu that nobody else does. Each sees the other as they want to be seen and an intense relationship starts. By 1997 they are living together in a leafy suburb of Canberra, where Anu is studying law at Australian National University (ANU). They appear to be in love, but still the relationship seems strained. She is having all sorts of irrational thoughts and he can’t understand why she is feeling the way she is.

Sotiris Dounoukos followed events as they unfolded in his home town of Canberra and then read Helen Garner’s study of an obsessive relationship, which pointed to community failure. He was left with a sense of disbelief. During his undergraduate studies at ANU, he had attended law school with many of the people involved in what went down.

The questions this film poses include whether Anu’s actions were those of a mentally ill person or of a highly intelligent killer, or perhaps something more complex, a woman who fell willingly under the spell of her own illusions? And at what point should others have taken action? How much culpability did friends and colleagues have? This is, indeed, a fascinating and mysterious tale about which the full truth may never be known.

It becomes more and more curious the way it is played out on screen. Clearly Anu Singh is troubled and there is no dealing with those troubles because, quite frankly, nothing allays her fears/delusions. I wasn’t sold on the acting, with much of it appearing staged rather than natural. Still, the story intrigued me because I had not heard of this case before, so that certainly helped to pique my interest. It was so different, so unusual and, in many ways, so inexplicable. There’s a growing unease in the way the movie unfolds and yet friends and “hangers on” didn’t do anything to stop what eventuated – in fact there were those who aided and abetted it.

So, Joe Cinque’s Consolation’s is a mixed bag, which – quite frankly – made me want to go out and buy Helen Garner’s book, so I could find out more. Rated M, it scores a 6½ out of 10.

Director: Sotiris Dounoukos
Cast: Maggie Naouri, Jerome Meyer
Release Date: 13th, October 2016
Rating: M

Alex First