Listen Up Philip

Alex Ross Perry’s first feature to hit Australian cinemas, Listen Up Philip, moves in misdirection; its first fifteen minutes set up an acerbic yet tiresome character study, Jason Schwartzman relishing his most arrogant character yet in Philip Lewis Friedman, “notable” under-35 novelist self-sabotaging the release of his second book. He talks (and lives) in affectation, his sense of superiority an assumed persona, aping his notions of the ‘great American novelist.’ These undesirable characte...