The Birthday Trip review: Sharp Australian comedy pokes fun at middle class aspiration

Between Australian movie The Birthday Trip and an upcoming British series Two Weeks in August, you may want to rethink your next friend group holiday.

The scenario of mixed personalities, a resentment-laced history and a different environment make for a combustible dynamic – which is obviously great for drama.

The sharply observed comedy The Birthday Trip is a small local film shot in NSW’s Southern Highlands area, known for its bucolic landscapes and rich residents (the likes of Nicole Kidman, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Gai Waterhouse have boltholes there).

It wasn’t the most obvious setting for a social satire poking at Australia’s aspirational middle class, but for this, it was the perfect backdrop.

There are some blazing rows against the silence of these Instagrammable surroundings that really highlight the disparity between projection and reality.

The premise follows three school friends who have an annual combined birthday trip, and this year, it’s a big one – the three-oh.

Each bring their male partners – who all seem to be at least 10 years older – to this luxury holiday house set-up where an on-site experience director, Felix (Robert Preston), is on hand to cater to their whims.

There’s Clare (Nicola Frew), an artist, and her partner Jim (David Quirk), a jingle writer who likes to poke the bear. There’s also Angie (Josephine Starte), a documentarian, and her boyfriend Lars (Luke Jacobz), an overly enthusiastic finance bro.

Finally, there’s Isabel (Annelise Hall), a social media devotee and a development coordinator at the ABC, and her beau, Mark (Ben Gerrard), a weapons manufacturer you wouldn’t want to be seated next to at a dinner party.

The idea is that between these six characters, you have a cross-section of either financial or cultural elitist archetypes, although those in the creative industries are over-represented.

Writer and director James Robert Woods is obviously more familiar with that community, and there is something in the fact that so-called cultural elites have social capital but not necessarily actual financial assets.

But given the likely cost of the holiday and the cars they’re driving, it’s assumed these characters have access to money (certainly two of the three male characters are in high-paying jobs), evident in the classist attitudes that emerge when confronted with Felix’s living quarters and his partner (Sapphire Blossom) and kids.

There are different degrees of performative empathy to outright judgment, and it’s part of The Birthday Trip’s insight into its characters and their social milieu.

Performance is big part of these characters, whether it’s putting up a front for their friends or reinforcing a certain perception of themselves. In some ways, you almost appreciate Mark, the weapons dude, who’s bracingly honest about who he is, even if he doesn’t see that he’s a legit bad person.

Woods said he follows the philosophy of legendary Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov that life should be captured as is.

Vertov’s magnum opus was Man with a Movie Camera, a 1929 documentary for which he filmed everyday citizens (mostly, some scenes were staged with actors) going about their lives. Film technology was still in its early days, and Vertov had experimented with then new techniques to position the audience in the same space as his subjects.

The Birthday Trip is meant to be a slice-of-life look at this species of Australian elites, and uses mostly hand-held cameras and a generous amount of close-ups to create a near-uncomfortable intimacy with his characters. It’s almost as if they’re being imposed them on the viewer, so that there is no reprieve from the tension of The Birthday Trip.

The marketing materials for the movie has sold it as an “Australian White Lotus”, and it’s not exactly that which is not a bad thing, but it does operate with similar thematic ambitions.

It’s provocative, funny and kind-of deliberately repellent in that it’s rendered these recognisable archetypes who are varying degrees of squirmingly familiar, whether you want to believe it or not. It does with punchy humour – some of the dialogue is genuinely chortle-worthy.

And it does feel authentic to the specificity of the fake-egalitarianism of Australian aspiration.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Birthday Trip is now in cinemas.