The Moon is Upside Down: Movie Review

Cast: Loren Taylor, Victoria Haralabidou, Robyn Malcolm, Jemaine Clement, Robbie Magasiva, Rachel House, Elizabeth Hawthorne

Director: Loren Taylor

Eagle vs Shark's Loren Taylor goes behind the lens for this, her first feature film, which features a triptych of tales involving women at various stages of their lives.

There's Polish bride Natalia (Haralabidou) who's about to marry Jemaine Clement's MAc and whose arrival in New Zealand doesn't match her expectations; there's Briar, an anaesthetist who's ironically sleep-walking through a long distance relationship with Magasiva's Tim; and there's Faith (Hawthorne) who inherits a dead body in a property deal.

To say desperation runs deep in these three stories is somewhat of an understatement.

But Taylor mines the horror of the mundanity and awfulness in their lives to varying degrees of success. While it feels like some of the stories don't quite connect or end in ways that would satiate an audience, others shine in their veracity and the execution of their humdrum existence.

From brutally honest sex scenes that lean into midlife desperation to acid one-liners (mainly from Malcolm's withering Hilary, who tells Natalia: "Aren’t you a stunner… in your own way"), there's plenty of honesty on show here, even if some of it is particularly awkward and awful.

The Moon is Upside Down leans into the more cringe elements of life, but the way Taylor helms everything, it feels too bleak and realistic to ultimately end in catharsis.

But perhaps like life itself, The Moon Is Upside Down is an at times messy look at humanity in all its elements - yet, it's as compelling as it is claustrophobic.