One Perfect Day
Directed by Paul Currie
Paul Currie, a prominent Melbourne youth-worker, plunges his audience into the pumping/thumping world of glow-sticks, drugs and DJs that is the rave scene. Tommy Matisse (Dan Spielman) returns to Melbourne after his sister ODs. He’s a gifted musician who hears music outside the concert hall, in streets, stations and waterfalls.
Leanna Walsman, who plays his girlfriend Alysse, says “it’s a movie by young people for young people”. She goes on to say that given the huge promotion, you might get the wrong idea; One Perfect Day “started as a really, really, really low-budget independent film”.
Tommy explores the clubbing scene and soon takes up DJing, where he bumps into the ominous nightclub owner Hector and his two minions, one of whom is the in-ya-face “VJ” Trig (Nathan Phillips): think of him as a pill-pushing Jamie Oliver cross Steve Irwin. But Hector’s utopian vision of a youth-led revolution soon turns out to be nothing more than a despotic ambition corrupted by drugs.
According to Leanna, unlike some productions where dance-scenes are shot minus music, the actors “immersed themselves” into huge day concerts with real music really playing. The ravers were in most cases genuine, attracted by word of mouth or flyers.
The filmmakers claim they don’t intend to preach or dictate to youth. They just p r e s e n t something and it’s up to the viewer to walk away with what he or she chooses. I am not so sure. While there is no visible punishment for Trig, Hector is removed in a scene with Hitler-like overtones. The fact that the drug-takers pay the highest price for their folly makes the story a bit heavy and theatrical.
I am sure that lots of youth (and otherwise) whose every breath is taken in the dizzying miasma of rave culture will find an instant and intense empathy with these people and their high-low-high-low lives: for the rest of us, One Perfect Day remains too far away.
Felix Staica
