Cinema41: "The Rage in Lake Placid"

Screening is Thursday, February 28th. Doors open at 7pm, Movie starts at 8pm, and as always, the Salvage Vanguard is BYOB. We will also have FREE BOOZE if you don't remember yours (IDs checked, kids).

Be sure to stick around after the show for a live Skype interview with Australian heartthrob Ben Lee!
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Placid Lake is our protagonist in this 2003 coming-of-age Australian film by Tony McNamara. The film’s quirky, socially and culturally satirizing wit works with its many comically nuanced… Show more performances, driving the story’s hero on a circuitous path to define himself.

After suffering from a traumatizing high school experience, stemming from early academia, Placid forges his way into the insurance business. To the chagrin of his parents, who renounce conventionality and see his occupational conformity to be a form of severe rebellion, he transforms himself in order to shed his former identity as a “weirdo.” He claims to strive for a new identity, as he puts it, as a “functioning member of society.”

Placid’s bizarre relationships and mature internal battles drive the story. The disintegrating cordiality between his hippie psychiatrist parents and him mirrors that of his reluctantly platonic relationship with his best friend since childhood, Gemma. She is a prodigious scientist who, fueled by her father’s ambition for her, is headed to university. She is beautiful, just as doubtful of her self-identity, and just as neurotically “fringe” as Placid. This makes things tense when Placid moves to renounce his former self. Placid’s relationships reach a teetering penult of crises just as his internal sense of identity loses its balance.

Australian writer and director Tony McNamara was a playwright prior to writing for film and television. His lead character Placid Lake was initially developed for the stage in his first play The Café Latte Kid, in which Placid has a similarly neurotic relationship with his parents.

The film’s all-star cast features Australian musician and performer Ben Lee as Placid Lake, prominent actress Rose Byrne as the spunky ingénue, and award winning stage and film actress Miranda Richardson as Placid’s mother. It was a winner at the Melbourne International Film Festival, an was an official selection at both the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the American Film Institute Film Festival.

Join us on February 28th to view this cinematic jewel at the Salvage Vanguard Theater. Following the screening, The Rage in Placid Lake’s Ben Lee will be joining us for a conversation via Skype. My! The rarities of witnessing an Australian film on the big screen and a personal interview with its superstar lead actor!!!!!

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