Networked Knowledge Book and Film Reviews

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Joe Cinque’s Consolation – a film by Sotiris Dounoukos http://sa.palacecinemas.com.au/movies/joecinquesconsolation/

In early 1997 Anu Singh, a beautiful law student at the Australian National University, confides in friends that she plans to kill herself to put an end to a mysterious illness. With doctors unable or unwilling to help, Anu’s engineer boyfriend, Joe Cinque, attempts to get to the bottom of her condition. But Anu’s mental and emotional state disintegrates, and her plans grow more macabre.

Joe Cinque’s Consolation by award winning filmmaker Sotiris Dounoukos, is the adaptation of Helen Garner’s best-selling account of these true-life events: an examination of collective and individual responsibility, and a crime that shocked Australia.

Review by Dr Bob Moles – Networked Knowledge

This is certainly one of the most intriguing and disturbing films I have seen for a very long time. That may be, in part, because of my own personal connection, albeit tangential, with the circumstances upon which the film was based. Or it may be because my primary research interest is on the topic of miscarriages of justice.

I was teaching law at the ANU at the time when these events took place. Two of the students depicted in this film attended my classes in jurisprudence (legal theory). Indeed, they gave a presentation to the class which, being rather unusual, I remember clearly to this day. I have always seen it as part of my duty as a lecturer, especially one dealing with issues of legal philosophy, to assist my students in developing their awareness of the moral and ethical dimensions of law and of their role as law students in relation to those issues.

To make matters even more interesting, Sotiris Dounoukos was also a law student at the ANU at that time. However, he obviously resisted the temptation to display his skills as a qualified lawyer in this film. There is no court scene and no interactions with lawyers preparing for the murder trial. Indeed, the film ends just when those issues are about to arise. For purely selfish reasons, I would like to see another film taking us through those very issues to what on any view is an outstandingly surprising, and lenient, result. Sotiris has chosen to take us through the preliminary stages of these relationships. In an entirely convincing manner he allows us to follow the developing intimacy and control which emerges as part of a tangled web of interactions between these students. The ideation of suicide becomes part of the narrative, and this leads to some confusion about who is going to be the subject of it. The group of students meet and with some awareness that Anu and Joe may be leaving them soon, some of them appear to be little more than spectators. Others become ‘facilitators’ to varying degrees, and in ways which we, the real spectators, find almost incomprehensible.

As I opened the Q and A after the film I told the audience that I wished with all my heart that this film had been a work of fiction. Although I was familiar with the story, having read the excellent book about the case by Helen Garner, I felt devastated to realise that in peaceful sleepy Canberra, at one of our most prestigious universities, amongst beautiful and talented law students, such horrors could emerge. My sense of connection to the case may have enhanced my sense of the grotesqueness of it all – but maybe not so. I am of the view that anyone seeing this film will be thinking about it for a very long time afterwards.

It raises those fundamental questions about the nature of good and evil and how appearances can deceive even well-informed and thoughtful people – and encourage them to mistake one for the other. For me, as a lawyer, it is intriguing to think that ultimately, even the judge, who I had known from my time in Canberra, may have been drawn in to that process.

I know that some commentators have said that the film should have developed the narrative into the courtroom drama. Whilst I am sure that part of it would be fascinating and well worth portraying at some stage, this was not the time to do that. The developing interplay of these relationships was handled sensitively and required the time and pace to enable us to see them unfold.

Other commentators have said the film should have followed more closely Helen Garner’s censorious line to underscore the injustice done to Joe. That tone and approach was important to that book at the time it was published and entirely appropriate to help us understand the injustice which had been done. However, it was in my view important for the film to take a different approach. Sortiris guides us through these emerging events – we see the loving relationship which Joe has with his parents – the care he shows for Anu – and the way in which she directs those she is involved with towards a catastrophic conclusion - which at the end of the day appears to be not the real responsibility of anyone. I felt at the end of the film that it was important that the director had left quite sufficient room to allow me, indeed, to require me to work out for myself how I felt about it all. I am still thinking and working that through, but that is no defect of the film, far from it. The best of films, and this is one of the best, might keep you thinking for a very long time to come. This one certainly does that. Whilst you don’t have to be a law or psychology student to go and watch it, I would be very disappointed if there were any law or psychology students who didn’t go to see it.

Bob Moles, Adelaide, 21 October 2016