Screened as part of NZIFF 2017

That’s Not Me 2017

Directed by Gregory Erdstein World

A wannabe star is gutted by her identical twin sister’s HBO success – plus she’s dating Jared Leto – then decides to take advantage in this wry Aussie comedy of outsized fantasies and bad behaviour.

86 minutes DCP

Director

Producers

Anna Kojevnikov
,
Sally Storey
,
Alice Foulcher
,
Gregory Erdstein

Screenplay

Gregory Erdstein
,
Alice Foulcher

Photography

Shelley Farthing-Dawe

Editor

Ariel Shaw

Production designer

Sally Addinsall

Costume designer

Sophie Hayward

Music

Nicholas Pollock

With

Alice Foulcher (Polly/Amy Cuthbert)
,
Isabel Lucas (Zoe Cooper)
,
Richard Davies (Jack Campbell)
,
Belinda Misevski (Ariel)
,
Rowan Davie (Oliver Brook)
,
Andrew Gilbert (Stephen Cuthbert)
,
Catherine Hill (Diane Cuthbert)
,
Lloyd Allison-Young (Simon)
,
Janine Watson (Patricia Clarke)
,
Steve Mouzakis (Anthony)

Festivals

Sydney 2017

Melbourne director Gregory Erdstein and co-writer/star Alice Foulcher have created a sassy, slyly sympathetic satire of celebrity dreams in this neatly proportioned debut feature. Polly (Foulcher) can’t remember when she didn’t fantasise about being an acclaimed actress, and she’s already turned down daytime TV to prove it. So it’s a rude shock when her identical twin sister Amy (Foulcher again), showing no such qualms, steps from Aussie soap to HBO kudos and starts dating Jared Leto.

Polly’s desperate measures are best left to the film to divulge, but they put her firmly in line with the unruly young women driving such era-defining comedies as Bridesmaids and Girls. Let’s just say she does not always correct those who mistake her for the real actress in the family. Polly’s sorry world is amusingly filled out by a wryly funny ensemble, including Isabel Lucas as a spaced-out compatriot with one toe firmly placed on the Hollywood ladder; Rowan Davie as a self-styled guru of Melbourne fringe theatre; Belinda Misevski and Lloyd Allison-Young as Polly’s feckless housemates; and Catherine Hill and Andrew Gilbert as doting stage parents, eager to fill scrapbooks with reports of their daughters’ stellar achievements.

Cinema-loving visitors to Melbourne may recognise the Astor, one of the great living picture palaces of the South Pacific, cunningly dressed to represent the multiplex where Polly sort of holds down a job.