This movie revolves around two addicted couple Blaisa and Nessa, who lives in poverty and receive contemplation by their neighbours and earn their living by manipulating people to use their old mower in order to cut the grass.
Scene by scene, what McKenzie is after is capturing the process of a young woman walling herself off from sentimental appeal in order to save her own life, steeling herself for the long walk away from the wreck of her man.
The finely gradated interactions between the protagonists and different representatives of various institutional establishments place empathy and ambivalence side by side.
Its story may be thin, its characters not particularly original, but McKenzie's use of cinematic language is savvy and novel, finding complexity where others might find only emptiness.
Working with the cinematographer Scott Moore, McKenzie frames her characters with a radical obliqueness, visually conveying their wounded tenderness and stifled fury and evoking mortal struggles with minuscule gestures.
McKenzie doesn't stoop to deliver a pat happy ending, and even the moderately upbeat final scene features an oddly discordant note in the score that suggests not all is well.
Her characters are a little too blank to sustain interest through an entire film, but this modest indie generates a haunting mood of 21st-century despair.
