Page 45 Review by Jonathan
"BLUURRGH!
"...Jane?
"Jane? I want to tell you something..."
"Just focus on not throwing up, okay? We're nearly there."
"No, no... I have to tell you, I feel so guilty...
"Do you remember my going-away party? Like before I went to Tokyo?"
Perhaps you have one of those friends, who have done fantastically well for themselves, but seemingly have become rather insufferable with it? Jane does. Her old schoolfriend Natalie, whom she used to be inseparable from at school, is now gracing the Japanese catwalks as a fashion model. Natalie's coming back home to Australia to do some publicity for her latest campaign and has deigned to suggest Jane and her have a catch-up night out... at a glamorous fashion-world party filled with beautiful people from the in-crowd.
It's Jane's worst nightmare, being very much a girl with her feet firmly on the ground, even though she's stuck living at home with her mother and her mother's odious and obviously unfaithful boyfriend Steve. Jane's desperate to move out with her own devoted long-term boyfriend Ben, but all they can possibly afford is a tiny room in a dreary house-share with some rather odd characters, and even then they're woeful short of the required deposit. Which is why, when Natalie drunkenly blurts out a previous betrayal in a pissed-up, post-party state, leaving Jane in a state of extreme dudgeon, she starts to concoct an elaborate scheme to get her revenge... and the deposit.
Chris Gooch perfectly captures Jane's draining existence and the covert thrills she begins to experience whilst stealthily executing her plot. His chosen colour palette of black, white and dull red, the shading entirely provided by a letratone effect, captures the grim reality of both her suffocating, stilted life and her dark intentions towards her former friend.
It's a gritty story with a rather bleak climax, which upon reflection is less simplistic than it first appeared to me. I initially struggled with the openness that Jane acts in the final scenes, but in fact, sometimes, someone just needs to realise that other wronged person really is hammering the nails firmly down on the coffin lid of their dead friendship.
