MY OTHER ME: A FILM ABOUT COSPLAYERS

Featuring: Danae, aka ‘Rifa’; Lilly aka ‘SecretAttire’; and, Lucas aka ‘Twinfools’.
Director: Josh Laner.

Rating: 4/5

Canadian documentarian Josh Laner’s plunge into the world of fancy-dress geekdom, otherwise known as ‘Cosplay’, yields surprisingly profound insight into not only the convention floor eccentricity of the archetypal nerd but also the precipitous brink of young adult self-identity. By focussing on three vivid personalities for whom the construction and public display of their costumes is a defining trait, Laner’s camera captures personalities being formed and generational change being documented.

Laner, who explored the more hardcore of society’s disassociated in Wastings & Pain, his 2010 doco on Vancouver’s skid-row population, lends a remarkably empathetic lens to his film’s first-person perspective. Drawing life-sustaining strength from their devotion to intricate and artistic full-body recreations of anime/sci-fi/comic book icons, the three late-teen/twenty-something subjects central to My Other Me seem outwardly ordinary types but are soon revealed to each have complex back stories. Their profiles not only fuel their cosplay obsession but also strengthen Laner’s notion that everyone is intrinsically normal, no matter what course their mentality or biology dictates.

Danae Wilson’s web-profile is Rifa, one of the cosplay community’s most beloved and respected artisans; she funds her obsession with film industry makeup gigs. Her journey before Laner’s camera is not an unfamiliar one – the arty teen from a broken home who finds both solace and angst in her devotion to artistic expression – but she also struggles with unrequited love and a personality prone to anxiety and impatience. Sweet early-teen Lily Rose Smith is aka SecretAttire, an every-girl personality whose home-made costumes (influenced by the love her grandmother guardian) are confab hits and whose re-connection via cosplay with her recovering-addict mother provides the film with a deeply emotional core.

The most enigmatic of Laner’s cosplayers is Lucas Wilson, aka Twinfools, an online legend who struggles with his e-fame while being seemingly at ease (at least, for the camera) with his transgender status. Laner is forced to deal with every documentarian’s nightmare when Wilson abandons the project mid-shoot, a development that his handled with an assuredness by the production that belies its first-feature inexperience. Wilson is a compelling figure and both his decision to abandon the shoot then relent to allow an 11^th hour interview makes for terrific viewing.

What binds them all is Laner’s determinedly humanistic approach to what is otherwise viewed as a niche, ‘weirdo’ fan sector. The intertwining of Rifa, SecretAttire and Twinfool’s fantasy existence with the universally recognisable early-life dramas of Danae, Lily and Lucas ensures that this high-def, no-budget work is a smart, funny and involving slice of real-life factual film-making. Laner is a talent to watch; My Other Me is a film to seek out.

Read the SCREEN-SPACE interview with Josh Laner here.

My Other Me: A Film About Cosplayers will have its Australian premiere at the Gold Coast Film Festival on Friday, April 19.