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The film people talk about when they say they want a new kind of cinema is Jane Schoebrun’s I Saw the TV Glow. This is not hyperbolic. I Saw the TV Glow defies any categorisation beyond the lazy blanket “Lynchian” throw around whenever a film dares to dip its toes in the forbidden and scary world of our dreamscapes. It defies the typical structure rules, though it gives itself to a straightforward narrative form – one moved by emotion. I’m even concerned that explaining how this film works will detract from your own experience. This film demands utter and complete devotion from its audience, and I feel for those who won’t give themselves to it.  

In broad strokes, the story follows a young teenager, Owen (Justice Smith), who connects with Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) over a kid’s horror cult TV show, The Pink Opaque. It’s the 1990s, and Owen and Maddy are going through their own crisis of loneliness and identity. Their social life is barely existent, and at home, both reel from unexplored trauma.   

But every Saturday evening, in front of the TV’s warming glow, Owen and Maddy find comfort in each other.   

This is a shared experience between millennials. We were the first generation raised by television, mainly because producers understood that marketing to our aspirations and insecurities was more profitable than the more active Gen Xers. The Pink Opaque is like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Eerie Indiana. My parents would’ve thought of it as shows for children and/or girls, but in my mind, like Maddy says, they were “way too scary, and the mythology is way too complicated for kids.”  

Schoenbrun could’ve let her film settle in this analysis of 90s nostalgia and pre-9/11 teen ennui, and it would’ve been fine. Later in the movie, an adult Owen streams The Pink Opaque again, hoping to chase the high that sated him decades before, but instead finds only emptiness. As an adult, he lost the magic that allowed him to see between the cheap art direction and the corny lines. It’s like discovering your heart has been betraying you; like when Scout comes back home from university and discovers her perfect father, Atticus, is just another Southern bigot. That whole scene could have made the film, and I would have been happy.  

But Schoenbrun shoots for the stars. Surrounding that sorrowful atmosphere, filled with haunting and phantasmagoric images, where reality constantly merges with fiction, and it’s hard to discern what is true and what is a product of Owen’s imagination (but then again, isn’t the metaphor just as accurate as the truth?), is a heart-wrenching tale about subjecting to an existence one doesn’t ask for. Isn’t that all of us? Suddenly, we’re married, have children, a job, and constantly tell ourselves we’re happy because it’s the only way we can cope with the stagnant normality.  

In another moment halfway through, Owen meets Maddy again after her mysterious disappearance. Owen has moved into the trawls of social responsibility, while Maddy has spent the past decade living inside the universe of her favourite show (literally?) It was like a punch in the stomach for any hopeless romantic.  

I Saw The TV Glow is a film that is hard to convince but easy to like. It’s gorgeous, with Schoenbrun and her director of photography, Eric Yue, injecting every image with these beautifully saturated colours against an intense black, so everything is reminiscent of watching TV with your face close to the TV set in a dark room. It’s intense and evocative and unearths deep emotions. I wept at the end  – not at a particular moment, but the dreading realisation that time and memory pass and we don’t necessarily evolve from it – we just change.  

The Pink Opaque shares the title with an old Cocteau Twins record before the group blew up into the alternative scene with the genre-defining ‘Heaven or Las Vegas’. Maddy would’ve known the band; she would’ve gravitated towards the spacy, contemplative rock. The final film recreates that dream pop mood with a terrific soundtrack by Alex G and songs like Yeule’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s ‘Anthem For A 17-Year-Old Girl’. A song fittingly starts with the line, “Used to be one of the wretched ones and I liked you for that // Now you’re all gone, got your make-up on, and you’re not coming back”. It is a song whose DNA can be traced back to the Twins’ ‘Pearly Dewdrop’s Drop’, where they sing “taciturn to pillow // to try to turn to… first, though, I must die // to rip asunder what he saw.”  

If that last sentence meant anything to you, go see this film.  

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5  

For melancholy millennials who still listen to dream pop and reminisce about slumping on the couch in front of the TV as a way to cope with their insecurities. For everyone else yearning for a form to tell a story that doesn’t pander nor patronise. This is cinema in its most basic and effective form: gorgeous and emotional.  

FAMILY DAY OUT TICKET GIVEAWAY – RUNT

LSJ and STUDIOCANAL have five family passes for an advanced special screening of the upcoming Australian film, Runt, Sunday 15 September at 11am at Event Cinemas Macquarie.

Craig Silvey’s beloved best-selling novel leaps onto the big screen in a charming new Australian family movie. RUNT is the heartfelt and hilarious tale of eleven-year-old Annie Shearer and her best friend Runt, an adopted stray dog with remarkable abilities. In a bid to save their family farm, the two aspire to compete in the Agility Course Championships at the prestigious Krumpets Dog Show in London, whilst overcoming hurdles, obstacles, and nefarious villains. In Cinemas September 19. Click here to view the trailer.

For a chance to win one of the five passes (each pass admits four people), email your LawId number to [email protected] with the subject RUNT by Wednesday 4 September. The five lucky winners will receive an e-invite for the special screening on their inbox.