Alphabet Lane review – tree-change couple invent fake neighbours in this unsettling drama
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The official synopsis of the writer-director James Litchfield’s darkly playful black comedy and relationship drama informs us that Alphabet Lane centres on a couple who “lose control of a joke about imaginary friends”. When I first read that, I thought: what a great premise! And then: how on earth can that be fleshed out into a feature-length film?
Litchfield has made a very good fist of it, pushing language and characterisation into intriguingly off-centre territory, using an innocuous dinner-table invention as a kind of conversational MacGuffin. It’s the spark for a story about a made-up conceit that gathers momentum, takes on a life of its own and ultimately slips beyond the grasp of its creators, who become both liberated and entangled by their web of fabrications.
The couple in question – Jack (Nicholas Denton) and Anna (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), who’ve moved from the city to the country – have an easy solution for finding new friends: just make ’em up! One evening Jack jokes that he met a farmer named Joe on the way home, then pretends to call him and invite him for dinner. Anna happily indulges in the fib, asking follow-up questions and soon claiming to have met Joe’s wife, Michelle.
This leads to an exchange of letters, beginning with Anna writing a letter to Joe, which she knows will be read by Jack. This gives the couple a new, almost confessional-like space to share emotions and fill a communicative hole in their relationship, Anna for instance noting how hard it is to “be somewhere so isolated”. These interactions are staged with a playful, mysterious touch; as their correspondence intensifies, it’s unclear if you’re supposed to laugh or be genuinely concerned about the characters’ welfare.
About halfway through, I found myself wondering whether Alphabet Lane – shot for less than $1m around the southern New South Wales town of Cooma – might’ve been inspired by Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In Edward Albee’s legendary play – and Mike Nichols’ classic 1966 film adaptation – George and Martha, the sparring couple at its centre, are famously revealed to have invented their son, a figure whose presence hangs over everything despite not really existing: a shared fiction, perhaps devised to ward off loneliness and emotional seclusion.
Litchfield’s lean, well-paced feature debut also raises questions about the responsibilities we bear towards shared fictions once others begin to invest in them emotionally. Sharing their secret, invented offspring was a big deal for George – who was livid when Martha mentions their “son” to other people – but it’s not an issue for Anna and Jack. They happily mention Joe and Michelle to visiting friends, which gets a bit awkward when these friends mention them to a longtime local who knows everybody in the area.
Litchfield’s elegantly immersive direction resists visual pop and overt aesthetic embellishments, intending us to stay focused on the dialogue and performances, which is where the film’s real texture lies. Denton and Cobham-Hervey have excellent, lived-in chemistry and are beautifully in sync, their performances as much about distance as closeness. Both project carefully defined characters who are gradually revealing themselves while hiding in plain sight. Their emotions are outsourced to some extent to their own creations, though their feelings are real even when scenarios are invented.
I’m in two minds about some aspects of the film’s final act, though a satisfying finale in narrative terms was probably always going to be off the cards, given the slippery nature of its central conceit. I love how Alphabet Lane blends genres as well as emotional registers, always with a gentle twang – sometimes quietly uplifting, sometimes quietly unsettling, and always with an undercurrent of melancholy.
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