It’s refreshing to watch a ‘sick teen drama’ that avoids easy sentimentality and instead builds complex characters.

Milla (Eliza Scanlen) looks like any other angsty private school teen and we don’t at first understand the significance of the opening scene on platform four. It’s where she meets Moses (Toby Wallace) who knocks her off her trajectory, both literally and figuratively.

He has bad news and the wrong side of the tracks written all over him. Milla‘s parents, Henry (Ben Mendelsohn) and Anna (Essie Davis), don’t like him, perhaps because he breaks into their house to steal drugs. And there are a lot of drugs around: the tranquillisers that Anna takes to ‘keep her on track’ and the ones Milla takes to stay alive.

Director Shannon Murphy slowly unwraps the characters and we find out as much from seeing Henry and Anna unravel as we do from watching Milla and Moses. It’s not always clear what sort of story this is and it’s all the stronger for it.

Milla and Moses are superb and you can’t help remember that point in your life when nothing was certain, the transition between childhood and adulthood. Henry and Anna are at the other end, stuck in ‘functionality’ as Moses accuses them. A state that seems unavoidable.

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Have you seen this film? Let me know your thoughts.