MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY FILM INQUIRER

The muse is a tantalising figure, a pure object of desire for the genius or artist to project theirs onto. Never fully reachable, they, usually she, can inspire otherworldly forms of seeing and existing.

A personal favourite on-screen muse of mine is Catherine Deneuve, an actress from the French New Wave and beyond. She was the long-time muse for Yves Saint Laurent, not to mention her many frequent directorial collaborators, and watching her on screen, specifically in films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Belle de Jour (1967), and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), it isn’t difficult to see why. Her magnetism is unmistakable, and the screen seems to be the best medium to fully capture her essence as she plays characters with such joy that you have no choice but to ache when she aches, because how can someone so electric suffer so profoundly?

I say this because to build a story around a muse you must understand why the muse is so interesting. It isn’t necessarily her look, but her essence and way of being. To make a film about the artist-muse you have to see from the artist’s perspective why this figure is the inspiration behind both art and torment.

It is this misunderstanding that plagues Petrol. Petrol follows Eva (played charmingly by Nathalie Morris), a naive film student who becomes enamoured with the artist Mia (Hannah Lynch) and enters her world of aesthetes and inner north dwellers. Mia becomes a muse for Eva, as she dreams and plans a student film around her while trying to understand who Mia is and the grief that consumes her.

Petrol is a muse story, with elements of this trope dripping throughout. Eva mentions she prefers the sun, with Mia journaling later that Eva swarms and follows her around as if she’s her light. Even their costuming, with the most evident example toward the film’s end as Eva swims in white and Mia swims in black, highlights their polarities and the former’s naivety in this world. They are two opposites leaning into each other as Eva struggles to learn her own identity as an artist and person.

The film’s main issue, with all its beauty, gothicism and playing with the surreal, boils down to the failures of Mia’s character. She isn’t interesting or unique enough to believably be the inspiration for this artist’s coming of age. She is simply a girl that lives in Carlton and does performance art.

Lodkina is a superbly talented filmmaker, that’s undeniable. She captures something so quintessentially inner city suburbia like Carlton, from the locations to the personalities, and manages to turn it into a gothic playhouse, a feat considering this is the same suburb that houses celebrities and young professional sharehousers alike. The film includes elements of the occult, with Eva seeing ghosts and mirror imaging of herself. Reality is blurred, from snaps of a finger manifesting a picnic, to dreams entering reality and reality entering dreams.

It is refreshing to see an Australian film play so boldly with conventions, even if the filmmaker gets too self-referential about it. There is a scene where Eva gets feedback for her final year project, and the teacher tells her that to break conventions you have to know them well. It does feel a bit too obvious – as if the film is begging for us to think, ‘is that what Lodkina is doing here?’ – but it is forgivable when you see such boldness.

To reduce all of the great markings of this film to how I feel about the muse figure, Mia, feels a disservice to all that is impressive about it. However, if the premise and catalyst for the story is the undeniable magnetism of Mia, who is beloved by all, including her ex-partner’s father, then perhaps that is the one convention that needs to be met.

There are complications to this trope here. The muse is often this passive creature to the genius artist’s active story. However, Mia has the power in this dynamic, offering Eva her friendship circle, home (the two live together for most of the film) and even a performance in Mia’s final project. Arguably, it is Eva who is passive to all of Mia’s whims. While this playful twist is admirable, a recognition of conventions to thus break them, as the film blatantly points out, this work is for naught if Mia fails to grab our attention.

This isn’t at the fault of the direction or the acting – Lynch handles the character well – her uniqueness and distinction are just so non-existent, that every decision made since Mia’s introduction becomes in vain.

The failure to conquer the muse is a shame, as there is a lot to be astounded by in this film. Just not Mia herself.

---

Petrol can be seen in cinemas now. This review was produced in collaboration with Farrago Magazine.