Critics Campus 2025 participant Fred Pryce dissects the stylistic and storytelling choices behind Sophie Somerville’s decidedly DIY film Fwends, about two slacker pals who hang out and horse around upon reuniting in Melbourne.

Sophie Somerville, the young Australian director of Fwends, has bristled at her Melbourne-set film being labelled ‘mumblecore’ – perhaps because mumblecore films generally aren’t very good. The epithet arose from a wave of micro-budget indie films in the 2000s characterised by a reliance on cheap digital cameras, improvisation, millennial-coded malaise and similar plots: some youngish, generally white, generally middle-class people fuck around in a city and don’t get up to much. The appeal is relatability: most of us don’t get up to much in life either. As Somerville puts it, “I remember watching [Girls] and being so obsessed because you do feel seen as a young person.”

Mumblecore is less a genre than a mode, a pathway to digital-era industry success that consists of putting out whatever film you have the resources to make in order to finagle your way around the festival circuit, establishing a sellable personal brand as you go. Hence why, despite none of these films being particularly big hits, they launched a cross-pollinating crop of filmmakers like the Duplass brothers, Joe Swanberg and Lena Dunham, who remained highly influential in the 2010s even as they ditched the shoestring budgets for bigger ones. Greta Gerwig’s debut acting turn in Swanberg’s LOL is a long way from the mega-budget phenomenon that is Barbie.

Fwends – which won the prestigious Caligari Film Prize at this year's Berlinale – is a low-budget, digital and heavily improvised film about two young women fucking around in Melbourne. The titular friends (played by actors Emmanuelle Mattana and Melissa Gan) are somewhat estranged, and they poke fun at each other and their surroundings as they struggle to re-establish their childhood camaraderie. It’s as mumblecore as it gets, but Somerville dislikes how the term “implies that it’s this low-key kind of film”. However, ‘low-key’ is the only register Fwends operates in: it is shot documentary-style among the crowds of the CBD, its camera meandering through long takes that frame the characters loosely from afar, amid a soundscape of dinging trams and tinkling Chopin piano.

The film is a comedy of sorts. So why are there no jokes? It’s typical of mumblecore that scripted humour is replaced by improvised gestures at something only theoretically funny. During one moment in Fwends, for example, the pair start rapping in knowingly silly voices. The idea of something funny is here, but it feels half-baked, like hearing a secondhand anecdote from an acquaintance (maybe you had to be there?). When they pass by a man dressed as a clown, one of them asks, “Is that man seriously dressed as a clown?” Is that a joke? Is the mere, random presence of a clown intended to provoke a laugh? If so, what is the actual joke? Improvisation is often fetishised as a shortcut to authenticity, but it’s an immensely difficult skill to make entertaining onscreen. The truth is that, when filmed, good improv is essentially indistinguishable from good writing and acting – just a whole lot less reliable.

Fwends

The creators of Fwends have big ideas. There are plenty of references to themes like climate change, capitalism and sexism. But these tend to stop at being references only, rather than being fleshed out through scripting. This shallowness is partially because these issues are raised via semi-improvised digressions that, ironically, feel inorganic; in one scene, a colonial-era statue is abruptly used as a generic symbol for “fucking men” (the noun phrase, not the action). The scenes feel stronger when they are more clearly planned – a premeditated plotline involving one of the characters having been sexually harassed by a male manager is both genuinely impactful and allows the women to develop their relationship as they grapple with their anger and frustration.

Improv can also serve as an invitation for the audience to not pay as much attention to formal details like editing, and it’s hard to tell how seriously the director wants us to take Fwends – even its title is assertively unserious, couched in a post-ironic online glamour. During a clichéd drug-addled adventure (visually delineated by unfortunately tacky filters), a deliberately pretentious French voiceover underscores the montage. Somerville has said she was inspired by French New Wave films featuring similar depictions of youth, but it’s unclear if this vague parody was done out of love or mockery or both. Is this making fun of other films or just itself? In typical Australian fashion, it’s as if Fwends is embarrassed about trying.

This indifference towards formal rigour is embodied by a scene in which the women board a tram going to Fitzroy (what could be more Melbourne than that?). I was delighted when their real-time conversation continued as the camera followed the tram snaking through the streets – a novel, cinematic way of showing these lumbering beasts as living parts of the city. Yet the shots repeatedly broke the 180-degree rule, sending the tram careening back and forth in opposite directions. Was the tram still taking them to glamorous Fitzroy, or sending them down to barren Docklands? This may have been a deliberate choice, perhaps to immerse the viewer in the disorienting chaos of public transport, but in context it just left me feeling like no-one was in control of the vehicle.

DIY filmmaking looks increasingly like the future of cinema, and is vitally important to fostering a thriving local film culture. I’m not made of stone – I loved seeing my adopted hometown onscreen, with characters like me inhabiting it. I just think Australian cinema can aspire to more. I want films that feel like films, that put ruthless care into theory and form and structure, or that carry a genuine punk spirit. Somerville says she wished to “normalise being an Australian woman”, and this brand of ‘feeling seen’ has increasingly become the endpoint for emergent art. I want films that look past representation, that are ambitious for their own sake. The recent Sydney-based film Friends and Strangers (MIFF 2021) has also been called ‘mumblecore’, but is astonishingly meticulous in its craft and thoughtful in its imagery. The best ‘mumblecore’ films tend to transcend the limitations implied by the label. I’ll always take pretentious over formless.

Coincidentally, mumblecore pioneer Jay Duplass also has a film at MIFF this year, a melancholy little rom-com called The Baltimorons. Despite its usual sort-of-jokes and awkward improv, I was struck by how much closer it was to a ‘regular’ movie – in terms of having a clear sense of story and scene structure – than one might expect. It’s as if Duplass has stumbled into discovering the basics of the form – a strangely modest position for a mid-career director. The Baltimorons is a warning to young DIY filmmakers that the traditional mumblecore model could be an artistic muzzle as well. If directors like Somerville want to make noise instead of merely feeling seen, it might be best to ditch the mumbling.

Fwends screened as part of the MIFF 2025 program.

The above has been written as part of MIFF’s Critics Campus program. The opinion expressed is the author’s and does not necessarily reflect that of the festival.