re:mote voices

Title: Show Me
Cast: Katharine Isabelle, Michelle Nolden, Kett Turton
Director: Cassandra Nicolaou

Sarah is preparing for a big weekend, the 10th anniversary with her partner Sam, and their first in the beautiful and remote cabin that Sarah has bought. However things quickly start going wrong – Sarah gets bogged down in traffic and when she phones Sam’s office she finds out that there is a hostile take over in progress and their romantic weekend away has just been put on the back burner. Furious Sarah lashes out at a couple of teenagers who try and squeegee her freshly washed car at traffic lights. Realising that it isn’t their fault Sarah tries to apologise and give them some money – but before she knows it she has the young couple, Jenna and Jackson, in her car and threatening her.

When their initial plan hits a snag, the couple panic, and snatching Sarah’s map to the remote cottage, they force her to drive them there. So Sarah finds herself tied to a chair in her new cabin with the potentially unbalanced pair. Jenna and Jackson are clearly troubled, there are hints of an incident where someone got hurt, that the pair are keen to get away from. But there is also obviously a past that deeply traumatised the pair. Will they kill Sarah, will they be content to take her money, valuables and car, or will Sam actually show up to rescue her?

Show Me reminds of a couple of other films, most significantly the Argentine film Suddenly and the German film The Edukators. In Suddenly two punk young lesbians “abduct” a young shop girl and force her on a road trip. While in The Edukators a group of political activists end up in a remote cabin in the woods with a rich man that they have abducted. Show Me was shown as part of a brief Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which is part of where the comparison to Suddenly comes in. Though Suddenly has a degree more charm and character than the Canadian Show Me, and The Edukators is considerably more clever.

One of Show Me’s big problems is that there are three “big” scenes/ideas in the film, and I could pretty much see them coming a mile off. In particular since the film is included in a Lesbian and Gay season, we know that there must be some relevance no matter how tenuous – so when the relevant scene comes up, instead of being surprising it was pretty obvious.

Curiously the cinema and festival brochure only mention that the film features Michelle Nolden, who plays Sarah, and whom I’ve never heard of. On the other hand the photo in the brochure clearly showed Katharine Isabelle, of Ginger Snaps fame, who was also in the remake of Insomnia. Isabelle as Jenna plays a particularly troubled teen, with an attitude not dissimilar to that of Ginger.

On the whole Show Me isn’t really a bad film, its just not particularly brilliant or memorable.