Day 4 of the Melbourne International Film Festival has concluded! And today’s agenda included four films for review!

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My Joy [Germany]

‘My Joy’ follows the journey of a truck driver through the Russian countryside, and his encounters with various characters that are

It was such a shame for this film, as it had a brilliant opening act. The interwoven stories that lead back to Gregory (the truck driver) as he travels the countryside, are thoughtful and interesting, whilst not tearing too far away from the central plot. The characters he meets are also compelling, they are all mysterious, with only hints to their backgrounds revealed, but enough for you to establish their motives.

Unfortunately, the moment the second act arrives, the pacing of the film collapses in a heap. The interwoven stories are now brought to the foreground, and it’s almost as if the writers had completely forgotten about Gregory. I felt as if an number of important scenes were missing from the middle of the film, as it opened a huge hole in the plot, and in turn absolutely destroyed the whole point of the finale. Scenes also drew out too long in the second act, and our lead character has gone from an interesting face to a downright boring one. The same could be said about the second act encounters too, as the characters involved felt absolutely random and did not convey any sort of motivation that the first act encounters did.

It was a real problem for the film because by the time the third act arrived (which had a good ending if you can identify the whole point of it), it was too late to recover. And it’s a shame, because I would have rated this film much higher had it not been for that.

Score: 3 out of 5

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