Above the Dust Level (1999) User Reviews

Dust or not, people need to find their OWN level!

[uds3 · 16 November 2001]

Interesting little character-entwining drama from Ms Drago.

Saw this eighteen months ago at a Sydney film festival which stirred the audience to voiciferous and spontaneous applause. It HAS something!

Set in an inner city condo, Christine (Turner) is holed up on the dusty third floor. She is an entrenched hypochondriac, riddled with allergies too no doubt! She is experiencing neighborly gridlock with other residents. Wayne (Tobin Saunders) has a potentially fatal communicable disease. He has also lost his underpants. Next floor up and enviably, above the dust level, lives cross-dressing Lisa (Dimitriades). She seems to possess an unhealthy number of pairs of men's undies.

How can the film fail?

OK but quite superficial

[bob the moo · 4 January 2003]

A hypochondriac lives in a dusty apartment. On the roof she meets Wayne, who lives in a very clean apartment but keeps losing his underpants. Christine suspects that her ex-lesbian lover, Lisa, dresses as a man and has a lot of pants. The three come together in a confrontation where each is left unsatisfied.

This film is amusing and has a certain amount of energy but it seems more interesting in stimulating the audience through cheap tricks rather than character. The film has nudity, lesbian relationships, drug use and swearing. These make the film feel tough and energetic but it's all superficial.

The actors are good and they go along accordingly but their characters are basic clichés rather than real characters - the butch lesbian, the hypochondriac etc. They helped hold my interest but they weren't as good as they could have been.

Overall this is amusing and the ending is quite funny. It has a certain amount of energy but it is all very superficial and lacks the sort of depth that I need to get into a short more. It's OK but I really hoped for more from a short that seems to have been distributed around the world with some success.