A chilling, measured and absorbing account of a true crime tragedy, Joe Cinque’s Consolation delves into the “whys” of a preventable crime to haunting effect.

1997 was not a good year for the residents of Canberra, the capital city of Australia known more for its workaday boredom that was rocked by two extreme incidents: the first being the Royal Canberra Hospital controlled implosion that was anything but, resulting in the death of a 12 year old bystander killed by ricocheting debris; and the second the senseless murder of young engineer Joe Cinque by the hands of his disturbed girlfriend Anu Singh, who would go on only to serve 4 years jailtime for drugging Joe with Rohypnol (commonly used for treatment of insomnia) and then lethally overdosing him with heroin as she watched him suffer and die for 36 hours.

The events surrounding this needless murder was painstakingly chronicled in Helen Gardner’s true crime biography, and effectively adapted here by director and co-writer Sotiris Dounoukos, who in his efforts has created an absorbing slow-burn crime thriller that easily ranks among the best in Australia’s storied history of the crime genre, a movie that disturbs and fascinates in equal measure about the corruption of accountability within a community infested by a culture of death, matched only by a justice system that failed an upstanding member of its state.

The movie begins with an innocent scene of boy meets girl, in this case Joe (Jerome Meyer) striking up a conversation with law student Anu (Maggie Naouri). It doesn’t take long for Anu’s fragile state to make itself known, as she openly proclaims to anyone who will listen that she is dying of an unknown disease. Anu’s friend and fellow law student Madhavi Rao (Sacha Joseph) goes along with the delusion. Joe is loyal and in love and vows to help Anu’s mental state. It is all for nought as Anu entertains the idea of suicide by lethal injection of heroin. Soon that idea turns into an obsession and Joe becomes a part of an unknown and uncontested suicide pact.

Dounoudos guides his audience through the distressing lunacy of it all, made even more so due to the numerous people with knowledge of what was happening (or due to happen), yet kept quiet either due to their culpability, or even worse the thought that “minding their own business” was the right thing to do.

It’s a frustrating and intriguing element in a film where the truth is not only stranger than fiction, but also says a lot about the corruption of a community whose guilt is deafening in its silence.