TOPLESS WOMEN TALK ABOUT THEIR LIVES

SYNOPSIS:
A lousy film script written by Ant (Ian Hughes) is discarded on a splendid New Zealand beach (next to where they shot The Piano) by Liz (Danielle Cormack), and found by a German tourist, who takes it back home to his filmmaking friend – and it gets made, in German. It’s called Topless Women Talk About Their Lives. By the time it is shown in New Zealand, Liz has fallen pregnant and misses her appointment for an abortion. Stuck with the prospect of a baby, she scrambles through the pregnancy while two men in her life scramble through their life. One, Neil (Joel Tobeck) the father of the baby who has been out of the relationship for a while, tries to work out how to deal with it, and fumbles his way back into her life, believeing he loves her. Another, the shallow, confused young buck, Geoff (Andrew Binns), tries to fall in love with whichever woman is nearest. Ant, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly paranoid and dangerous, in response to his film being unappreciated. These characters, and some of their friends, struggle to find happiness in a contemporary urban setting, but find only compromises, mistakes – and fate.

"The greatest achievement of this film is that it appears effortless. Behind its easy, almost nonchalant façade lies the agony and the ecstacy of human existence – as experienced in Auckland by a handful of 20+ young people. The agony of failed love and ambiguous love, the agony of loneliness, the ecstacy of sex and the discovery of maturity. But none of this is even mentioned. These are just people living life, coping as best they can. Filmed over six months to coincide with Cormack’s real life pregnancy, TWTATL is a blast of fresh, cool film air from the Land of the Long White Cloud, with a beguiling mix of comedy and drama. What it does well is create emotional catch-points for the audience, turning what may have been clever, low budget experimentation into meaningful observation. Some will want to change aspects of the ending, others will recognise it as a truthful, if painful, representation of life’s bitchier moments."
Andrew L. Urban