Shot with pleasure

Shot with pleasure

My New Gun

Directed by Stacy Cochran

Starring Diane Lane, James LeGros

At the Mandolin, Sydney

Reviewed by Gabrielle Jean Carey

Forget the futuristic fantasies of Terminator and Aliens; My New Gun shows us what happens when a woman gets hold of a gun in modern day, middle-class suburbia — and it s a lot more fun.

It s also a lot more realistic, too. When housewife Debbie is given a revolver by her middle-aged-with-values-from-the-Middle-

Ages husband, it s a status symbol to him and a nightmare (literally) to her. Things get more complicated when Debbie s neighbour and possible love interest, Skippy, asks to borrow the gun.

The dialogue is witty and the performances off-beat. Diane Lane (best known for Coppola's The Outsiders and The Cotton Club in the early '80s) as Debbie is fabulous to watch, and James LeGros (Drugstore Cowboy) is as likeable as the boy next door the name Skippy suggests. Stephen Collins is suitably infuriating as the unsympathetic husband.

Less about gun control and more about taking control of your own life, My New Gun is a deliberately low-key absurdist comedy which works from the premise that what goes on in our ordinary lives is actually very bizarre.

First-time feature director and writer Stacy Cochran has shot a movie that is sophisticated and sly and enjoyable from the first image to the last.

From GLW issue 94