Why can't "girl best friends" remain best friends for ever? You know why. Problems with guys, that's why. The Australian continent has some of the choicest two-legged testosterone on the planet (this is a well known fact), but a lot of it is away somewhere, wrastling with cows, surf, crocodiles, kangaroos, cane toads, several kinds of football, bulldozers, articulated road trains and 50-tonne ore transporters - along with assorted natural disasters, venomous critters and persistent flies. So the sub-virile pickings back in suburban Brisbane might not quite get a lady's juices flowing.
Jackie (Cindy Nelson) and Lucy (Francesca Gasteen) don't have a lot going for them. Jackie (with the crimson coiffure) should probably persevere with her psychiatric medication; and Lucy needs to get a proper job, instead of filling in time as Jackie's assistant at the video shop and bludging off her long-suffering uptight sister Fleur, while dreaming of an "acting career". But Jackie and Lucy do have each other. And in this crummy world, even a bumpy "each other" beats going it alone. At first they don't come across as particularly appealing, but give them time - they'll grow on you. If you want to get to know them better, IMDb directs you to the Official Site, where there's a media kit (on Adobe Reader).
So a local amateur theatre group is going to put on a stage version of "Jane Eyre". The play is a bit melodramatic, but Nelson and Gasteen can do melodramatic pretty good - they are real actors, and not just goofing around with this neurosis and buddy shtick (if they want to go on to become a next generation of Rachel Griffiths and Tony Collette, that's fine with me - there, you knew I was going to bring that "Wedding" in somehow). So get your grease-paint on, girls, and let's-- whoops! We have a problem! Who's going to score the role of heroine Jane and who's going to get stuck with that impediment to true love, mad Mrs Rochester? The female romantic lead will apparently get to sleep with the dishy male lead - a duty or a bonus? And then there's an "assistant director" throwing his weight around like he's Orson Welles or someone. It's all enough to strain the best of friendships, even a "Platonic" one (whatever that means). Will this odd coupling ("Jucy") mature? Or will it selfdestruct? Perhaps the two of them would be better off without each other.
Australian film-makers have been experimenting with humour, clashing wild exuberance with dry deadpan. Something similar is being attempted by some "post-feminist" women directors. It doesn't always work, and viewers might find that it's an acquired taste. But if you can forget that someone told you this is a chick flick, "Jucy" is quite a good example of the "unstable fun" genre. Because it's a movie made with love.
