We first meet Tom White (Colin Friels) on the day his life will change forever. It seems a normal morning; a blaring alarm followed by breakfast with his two young children and wife Helen (Rachael Blake). Only a slight tremor in his hands betrays the conflict eating away within. As a draftsman at an architectural firm he’s been committing hours to a project from which he was removed weeks ago, but nobody else, least of all Tom himself, seems to have any idea.

Alkinos Tsilimidos’s film is about the façade that people maintain and the consequences when it’s shattered - how, left defenceless, they chance to walk away from their lives. Inspired by true-life examples of men and women who did exactly that, writer Daniel Keene portrays Tom as a man who can no longer hold the illusion of his stable existence in place or prevent the needs of his internal and external worlds from colliding.

Tom walks out on his colleagues and his family, with only the suit on his back, setting himself adrift into the vast unknown, an emptiness he sees as a calming force that might siphon the pressures away. By stripping himself of his identity he’s denying them their hold over him, and on his journey through unfamiliar Melbourne suburbs he finds similarly afflicted people who share a common bond in forlorn and tragic ways.

He meets a young man, Matt (Dan Spielman), who is used to selling himself to survive and receiving rough physical treatment in return as he searches for meaningful love through random sexual encounters. Then there’s fairground worker Christine (Loene Carmen) who can’t resist the sense of loneliness Tom wears like a cloak. In one another they find temporary solace and a means to ease their shared pain.

Tom also encounters a rambling, paranoid old homeless man, Malcolm (Bill Hunter), whose affliction is the disease of “remembering” which is slowly killing him. Finally there’s 12 year-old graffiti artist, Jet (Jarryd Jinks), who relates to his hero Jet Li’s sense of justice but is perceptive enough to guess at a deeper story behind Tom’s deteriorating condition.

Becoming dishevelled, wearing rags acquired from various sources, eating at homeless shelters, earning change from sidewalk art - there’s little sense of progress; it’s as if Tom can only move forward through some form of devolvement, the only means of reclaiming his identity through losing it - reducing it to only the face that reflects in the mirror - and starting all over again. Tsilimidos seems to be saying that this could happen to anyone, whether their breaking point is a symptom of some deeper psychological condition or a by-product of the stressful world we submit ourselves to in a need to get by or conform.

Friels anchors the film with a heartbreakingly convincing portrayal of Tom. Some of the supporting actors - especially Carmen and Spielman - are weak in comparison and unable to hold their own against such an experienced performer, though Hunter briefly injects some believability with a dose of down-and-out hardship and young Jinks shines as an unlikely spirited friend for Tom. The talented Blake is given too little to do in the occasional glimpses into how the confused loved ones Tom left behind are faring with their drastically altered lives.

Will Tom ever regain the family and life he walked away from? The neat, ambiguous ending seems fitting in that it sustains the tone of the film, providing no easy or trite answer to that question and others. It’s a nice contrast to the montage of all the characters that opens the film, seen out of context before we’ve met them, the sense of dislocation they all share overlaid with a suitably morose Paul Kelly song.
Tom White is an occasionally compelling film, held together by the conviction of Friels’ great performance. It’s a stark portrait of a man who many others will see glimpses of themselves in, and a person whose actions may seem both indefensible and hauntingly plausible.

Review by David O’Connell

Director: Alkinos Tsilimidos
Screenwriter: Daniel Keene
Cast: Colin Friels, Rachael Blake, Dan Spielman, Loene Carmen, David Field, Bill Hunter, Jarryd Jinks, Angela Punch McGregor, Kevin Harrington, Gloria Ajenstat, Arthur Angel
Australian theatrical release date: 19 August 204