START OPTIONS EXIT

Stars: Ari Neville, Yoav Lester, Tom McCathie, Hannah Greenwood, Rhys Mitchell, Kristen Condon, Michael Fee, Tottie Goldsmith and Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read.
Writers: Yoav lester, Christopher Mitchell and Ari Neville.
Directors: Yoav Lester and Christopher Hf Mitchell.

Screens on Friday, September 12 as the Opening Night Film of the 2014 Melbourne Underground Film Festival.

Rating: 4/5 

A coarse, compelling, comedic odyssey, Start Options Exit takes the menu page cues of an old video game and crafts an existential riff rich in Gen-Y self-centredness and energised aimlessness. Driven by a frantic narrative brimming with bad decisions, foul language and failed conquests, co-directors Yoav Lester and Christopher Hf Mitchell’s debut feature is a both a work synonymous with the energy of great underground cinema and a slyly intellectual exercise that deserves to play beyond niche festival placements (of which there will be many).

A heightened, fantastical tone is set by the introduction of the lead characters within a pixelated reality; they are the central figures in a side-scrolling platformer being played by two pre-teens, left to their own devices in a suburban basement. In human form, the game figures become Neville (co-scripter Ari Neville) and Yolis (multi-hyphenate Lester), two like-minded mates with pretensions to alpha-male status but who we meet fuelling their false machismo by harassing a video store clerk (Michael Fee) and crudely propositioning a pretty patron.

So begins the pair’s late night meander through an urban landscape of hipsters, booze, drugs and thugs. Between bouts of loud street philosophizing on all that influences their existence (mostly girls, movies and drugs), the pair interact with different denizens of the night, all of whom have their own vivid personalities. Key amongst them is Tom McCathie’s ‘The Vagrant’, his strong spirituality and positive energy proving a potent challenge to the boys’ angry self-righteousness, and Hannah Greenwood as Chloe, Yolis' recent ex.

In addition to the vid-game graphics and VHS library, references that place the action pre-2000 include the lads carnal yearning for Christina Ricci’s ‘Wednesday Addams’ character, singer Tom Petty (the great singer reduced to crude punchline) and the use of Yazoo’s classic Only You to mesmerising effect. Also suggesting a period long since past is the casting of such time-specific identities as Tottie Goldsmith, terrific as a sexed-up matriarchal presence called ‘The Oracle’; late criminal anti-hero Mark ‘Chopper’ Read, as a quick-witted disposal store clerk; and, in the only sniff of stunt-casting, porn star Ron Jeremy as a relationship therapist. 

The production earns its Opening Night status at the 2014 Melbourne Underground Film Festival on several fronts, not least being its portrayal of two misogynistic, manipulative, opportunistic lead characters most would cross the street to avoid. In their world, rape at knifepoint reunites you with your loved one. Death is, literally, a distraction; a moment representing some other reality that passes as soon as the next meagre goal presents itself.

But Lester and Mitchell have a deeper purpose for Neville and Yolis than to merely paint them as some kind of R-rated ‘Bill & Ted’ comedy team. The filmmakers are determined to explore the consequences of lives lived from a purely egocentric perspective, forging an existence devoid of maturity, responsibility and consequence. Admirably, the production does not impose any type of life lesson upon its protagonists; as the title indicates, existence is a beginning, a series of choices and an inevitable finality. In the absence of empathy or compassion, the path from birth to death is a meaningless, nihilistic journey; Start Options Exit also makes it a funny, thrilling, confounding one.