A parent seduces their tech savvy son. Cleave is funny; I know - rare for a film made here. Infused with intentionally cringe screenwriting, two people play with soft incest, while a cheap digicam watches from afar. Starring Sydney shy-cons Athena Thebus and Chloe Corkran, Cleave holds on their nearing breaks and awkward mumbling. This is all phony chit chat inspired by porn. Filmmaker EO Gill shamelessly blends perverted keywords with naughty concepts - Canberranalia, eggs, American dialogue, suburbi-drama, vacuuming, poolboys – into grainy, multi-cam porn. Aussie cinema militantly opposes American drama (how French of us!) but this work does not. Cleave is a 21st men-tury moment to ponder how surveillance isn’t a site for voyeurism but rather for surfacing imagination.
