Weekend in Canberra, working week in Sydney: Donnie Darko

I was having drinks and dinner in one of the suburban centres of Canberra, Woden, on Friday and had another weird experience of adolescent mall culture. There was, basically, a promenade of fifteen year old girls (if that) walking to and fro at half hour intervals on the pavement outside the cinema. (We were in a good position to observe, spending some four and half hours eating and drinking - mostly drinking - at the outdoor seating of a nearby bar/café.)

Unlike Christina Aguelira they still had the crotch in their jeans, so I guess that was a start – but the average fashion statement for tweens and teens appeared to be “ho”.

There comes a point when you realise you really are getting older: it’s the moment when you realise teenagers are utterly incomprehensible – their clothes, music, speech, the works. Given what a generally ghastly, self-obsessed and conformist experience being a teenager is, this should come as something of a relief.

So watching “Donnie Darko” on Saturday at Marissa’s – it is at least set in the relatively familiar landscape of being an eighties teenager. (Imaginatively familiar really, I began high school in ’88.) However, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” it is not. It is weird, at times surreal and working out if the protagonist is mad or not occupies a good part of one’s concentration during the film. It also has the most sinister bunny suit I have ever seen in cinema. It’s great strength is in not revealing what the hell was really going on, and leaving you to theorise. The soundtrack is brilliant, and the small Drew Barrymore role is refreshingly good.

Anyway, in Sydney for work today and the rest of the week. Forgot how hot and humid this town is. Not really a city that is good for suits. Monday morning, at work, nursing a dehydration nosebleed … still, the working day can only improve, right?