''The Rage in Placid Lake'' is a 2003 Australian film starring Ben Lee and Rose Byrne. It features Placid Lake (Lee), a seventeen-year-old boy who has led a suburban

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

life with his neurotic, free loving parents. The film documents his journey of self-discovery as he rejects his hippie roots and embraces the mundane by working for an insurance agency, much to his parents' horror.

Plot

Precocious,

bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Beer * National Bohemian, a brand brewed by Pabst * Bohemian, a brand of beer brewed by Molson Coors Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, origin ...

teenager Placid Lake finishes high school, but after having an

existential crisis In psychology and psychotherapy, existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning. Some authors also emphasize confusion about one's personal identity in their definition. Existential crises are acc ...

devises a plan to totally reinvent himself as a functioning member of society. With a few weeks spent reading a library of self-help manuals, Lake gets a haircut, buys a bespoke suit, and finds a

white collar White collar may refer to: * White-collar worker, a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales-coordination tasks, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor ...

job at an insurance agency. Lake has a smart friend Gemma ( Rose Byrne) who tries to talk him out of his newly-found economic rationalism. Lake is adamant about becoming an acceptable member of society and ignores the signs of disapproval from his parents and best friend. Yet, by continuing his venture to normality, Lake struggles with what to say, think, and wear due to his insecurity and neurosis. Lake realizes that living to society's standards does not satisfy him as much as he had hoped. Eventually, this causes him to revert to his original

personality Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, mos ...

and become content with who he is.

Cast and characters

* Ben Lee as Placid Lake * Rose Byrne as Gemma Taylor *

Miranda Richardson Miranda Jane Richardson (born 3 March 1958) is an English actress. She made her film debut playing Ruth Ellis in '' Dance with a Stranger'' (1985) and went on to receive Academy Award nominations for ''Damage'' (1992) and ''Tom & Viv'' (1994). ...

as Sylvia Lake * Garry McDonald as Doug Lake

Box office

''The Rage in Placid Lake'' grossed $482,798 at the box office in Australia.

Reception

Based on 15 reviews collected by the film review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, 53% of critics gave ''The Rage in Placid Lake'' a positive review, with an average rating of 6.1/10.

Awards

References

External links

* *
''The Rage In Placid Lake'' at the National Film and Sound Archive
2003 films 2003 comedy films Australian comedy films Hippie films Films scored by Cezary Skubiszewski 2000s English-language films 2000s Australian films {{2000s-Australia-film-stub