If there is one single film that both shaped and defined my youth, it has to be 10 Things I Hate About You. There’s so many more than 10 reasons why 10 Things is, essentially, a perfect film.
I was 15, living in Coffs Harbour and in the throes of trying to “fit in”. Impossibly pale and acne-ridden, I had definitely not mastered the dark arts of Bonne Bell’s self-tan. I spent all my hard-earned cash from my job at the local fish market on hot pink Rip Curl tank-tops and Billabong triangle bikinis, and held a candle for the local surfer boy, who was more interested in the tanned beach babe passing on my love-notes.
I was in desperate need of a strong female role model.
Enter Katarina Stratford. She was, and remains, everything I wish I had the guts to be. She gleefully shunned the popular life, played guitar, read books, dressed differently – and still ‘got the guy’. She didn’t have to ‘transform’ or become somebody else. She was unashamedly her. There’s no Grease moment where she emerges having conformed to the current notion of ‘beautiful’ or ‘cool’.
And then there was the paintball scene.
I’m sure I’m not alone here. Post-paintball warfare, Patrick (a dreamy Heath Ledger) pulls Katarina down into the hay, tosses aside his protective glasses, tucks her hair away from her face and goes in for a kiss whilst the soundtrack swoons “I’m surprised that you’ve never been told before. That you’re lovely and you’re perfect. And that somebody wants you.” * I literally well up just thinking about it * It gave me hope that there was someone out there who would love me just as I am. (Fuck that would take a long time to eventuate though…)
Other highlights include Bianca Stratford punching douchebag Joey Donner square in his model face, Patrick’s public musical rendition of “I Love You, Baby” (which for some reason gets him detention?), Mr Statford – cinema’s most paranoid and protective father, Alison Janney’s erotica-novel-writing guidance counselor, and the fact that the whole film made Shakespeare seem cool.
As soon as the film finished, I rewound the VHS and watched it again. Endlessly quotably, it became my comfort food.
When I was at film school I postured that the kind of films I wanted to make were these austere, serious, heartfelt dramas. The kind that went to Cannes. I cited Haneke as an influence on “my work” (which amounted to a couple of short films), when in truth I’d only seen two of his films at my cinematographer’s recommendation. It’s taken me about a decade to admit that I want to make films like 10 Things. Films that make you laugh, make you cry and with kickass lead female characters. Films you can watch a hundred times over and never get sick of.
Alice Foulcher
Alice Foulcher is a writer, actor and producer from Melbourne, Australia. She frequently collaborates with her husband, director and co-writer Gregory Erdstein – whom she met while studying at the VCA School of Film and Television in 2008. Their debut feature film was indie breakout THAT’S NOT ME (2017), which earned her a Best Actress nomination for the 2018 Australian Film Critics Association (AFCA) awards and was ranked #5 of The Guardian’s Top 10 Australian films of 2017. Her short films include A BIT RICH (2014, Tropfest ), the critically lauded PICKING UP AT AUSCHWITZ (2012), and PARIS SYNDROME (2016) – all being collaborations with Erdstein. In 2014 she was granted an eight-month writing residency in Paris with Erdstein at the prestigious Cité des Arts Internationale where (aside from eating over 200 croissants and a lot of 3 euro wine) they wrote the screenplay for THAT’S NOT ME. She is currently in development for their second feature film.