Miley Tunnecliffe’s debut feature Proclivitas opens with a quote (in Latin then English) by Cicero which is essentially the case of what is good is “inclination” and the case of what is evil is “proclivity” or Proclivitas in Latin. None of the characters in the film want to be evil, but they’re weighed down by the proclivity towards self-destruction. Two childhood sweethearts who parted when they were teens are reunited. Two people who have lived in guilt and damage for years. Two people who want peace of some kind and all-forgiving love. Two people who need.
Clare Curtis (Rose Riley) tries desperately to save her mother Catherine (Therese Mavros) from a heart attack via CPR in a suburban Perth house. Catherine dies having left behind Clare’s childhood home in Monroe, a small rural town. Although she’s warned to be careful going back there, Clare is the only person willing to travel to the house and clean it out for sale. She’s stopped on the way into town by Constable Tara Lance (Hayley McElhinney) who sneers at the “big shot doctor” being back in the bush. It’s not as if Clare wants to be there and revisit a past she has avoided for many years; a past that holds the memories of who she was planning to be and the boy she loved. A past that is haunted. The boy she loved is Tara’s brother Jerry (George Mason) and Tara doesn’t want her messing him up. The two are on a collision course one way or another as Clare’s current grief manifests in connection to her leaving Jerry and Monroe as a teen. Coming back is like stepping into a “fucking time capsule” but for Clare and Jerry time is a capsule that has kept them from properly growing and moving on with life. When the teenage Jerry (James Rock) tells the teenage Clare (Chloe Brink) that he will wait for her to do her medical degree and come back to Monroe, it was a promise that was kept, although not in the way either of them expected.
The house on Old Forest Road is decrepit and on her first night there Clare falls through the floorboards. It’s also filled with items that weren’t moved. Record player, beds, clothing, photographs, mementos. The freestanding outdoor pool is still there. The house has also been waiting. The teenage Clare and the contemporary Clare exist at once through vivid memories and an aural soundscape that is winding through time, both as precognition and indelible reminders. The shadows Clare sees, “all in her mind” are dark and prominent. The warning to be careful was not casual – something wants to extract a cost from Clare despite what she’s already paid in the intervening years.
Clare first sees Jerry when she’s in the chemist. She tries to avoid him but in a small town it isn’t possible. He’s friendly with her and has the same charming smile that she’s always known. He’s warm despite her coldness. He’s welcoming which is something Clare doesn’t think she deserves. The closer he stands to her the more vividly she can see a blurred figure of a young woman over his shoulder.
Clare seems destined to be in Jerry’s company regardless of whether she consciously tries to shun it. He’s at the pub when she feels the suffocating need to leave the house. The attraction hasn’t dulled. In fact, when she is with Jerry or thinking about him, Clare finds time slipping and she’s breaking her strict (and disordered) eating rules. When Jerry is around, she loses control.
Jerry turns out to be the handyman sent by the local construction company to help fix up the house. Jerry’s calm demeanour and agreeableness seem to be the softest thing Clare has encountered in a long time. Her loss of her medical career which so disappointed her mother doesn’t faze Jerry. He never judges her. He is focused on her: her needs, her moods, her emotional and physical reactions. He doesn’t flinch when Clare reveals that she became addicted to opioids. He doesn’t condemn her when she breaks her sobriety. If anything, Jerry is easing Clare’s way back to a time when they were happy – which considering they’d been “together” since she was ten and he was eleven goes back to a childhood idyll where the pressures of growing up didn’t exist. The dark, oily, and clawing creature (designed by Kiana Beth Jones and played by Kade Power) who is stalking Clare doesn’t cause Jerry to think she’s unhinged. In fact, there’s almost nothing Clare can do or say that makes Jerry less keen to spend time with her and love her. Considering what Clare believes she owes Jerry, to be so entirely wrapped in someone who wants her and cares about her is irresistible. It’s also the worst thing that can happen to her as she surrenders any measure of control she learned. What is the ghost following them really going to do after all this time? What is the demon if not a part of her guilt?
Although Miley Tunnecliffe’s screenplay doesn’t stand out as vitally original, her skills as a director and mood-maker do. Proclivitas is stylish and unsettling by using all the senses to convey the haunted mindset of Clare and her psychological struggle not to be a person defined by her worst choices. The incredible score which by Stephen Callan merges seamlessly into the palpable and superb sound design. Meredith Lindsay’s cinematography is equally unsettling and captures the sliding nature of reality of a mind, or two minds, grappling with the messiness of guilt and failure. Both Rose Riley and George Mason give their all as the couple who uplift each other and drag the other down. The visual effects are eerie and for a low-budget first feature there is so much to admire.
Proclivitas is a triumph of mood and meaning through cinematic language. What it lacks in the script it more than makes up for in the execution. Miley Tunnecliffe proves herself a powerful emerging talent with acumen and intelligence guiding her sensory prowess.
Director: Miley Tunnecliffe
Cast: Rose Riley, George Mason, Hayley McElhinney
Writer: Miley Tunnecliffe
Producer: Kate Separovich
Composer: Stephen Callan
Cinematographer: Meredith Lindsay
Editor: Lawrie Silvestrin