Film history is dotted with stories of immensely talented people who launched their careers with a bang then disappeared from the scene far too quickly. What a shame we haven’t seen more from writer/director Emma-Kate Croghan, who rose to acclaim in the 90s and has made only two feature films: 1999’s Strange Planet (with Claudia Karvan and Naomi Watts) and 1996’s Love and Other Catastrophes.
Croghan directed the latter on a minuscule budget and a tight shoot (17 days) when she was just 23 years old. The film introduced audiences to two then-largely unknown actors, Frances O’Connor and Radha Mitchell.
Two decades on it’s a wonderfully spritzy dialogue-driven work to revisit, full of oomph and chutzpah. A one-day-in-the-life-of comedy revolving around a handful of argumentative university students, Love and Other Catastrophes has the verbal ping pong of a Kevin Smith joint crossed with the good-natured repartee of a Nora Ephron movie, but cranked to 11.
Taking a hit from the bong of the scuzzy Melbourne shared house scene, the film couch surfs at a lickety-split pace, with notes of the grungy spirit of Dogs in Space (1986) and the pop philosophy of He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (2001).
There are spirited performances from a fine cast, led by O’Connor’s most charming role to date. Her character, cinema studies student Mia, is radiant, self-conscious, formidable but unpretentious – a sort of Australian Greta Gerwig, chock to the gills with spunk and sass. Mia has recently broken up with her girlfriend Danni (Radha Mitchell) and moved into an apartment with Alice (Alice Garner).
They need another housemate; enter Mike (Matt Day) who might as well have lived in the same place Michael Hutchence flopped around in Dogs in Space. He decides to rethink his choice of shared house when his morning bathroom routine is interrupted by a stranger vomiting into the sink and he observes a group of stoners downstairs smoking bongs for breakfast.
Mia enlists the help of her friends to migrate from a course taught by a stuffy professor (a donut-munching Kim Gyngell) to one run by a trendier teacher. This proves hijinks-inducing when the current professor suffers a heart attack after nibbling his last pastry, leading to a covert break in to the deceased man’s office that wouldn’t look out of place in a John Hughes movie.
The trendy teacher is played in a small cameo by real-life critic Adrian Martin, at the time a contributor to the Age. Another Australian critic, Paul Harris, also briefly appears in the film.
Strange Planet was Love and Other Catastrophes’ spiritual sequel, similarly featuring zesty performances, including memorable turns from Naomi Watts and Claudia Karvan. Instead of taking place over a single day it transpired over exactly a year, from one New Year’s Eve party to the next.
In 2000 Croghan went to the US, started a family and dropped off the map. At one point she was attached to direct an adaptation of Philip K Dick’s dystopian future classic A Scanner Darkly, which was supposed to be written by a then-unknown Charlie Kaufman, who reportedly never advanced it past draft stage.
That would have marked quite a sea change; we can only imagine what could have been. While the film-maker’s oeuvre is way too small, Croghan more than made her mark, with one good film (Strange Planet) and one great one – her rollicking debut, which feels just as sassy now as it did two decades ago.
