Joe Cinque's Consolation review – a cynical exercise, but not without consolations

The poster declares this film as ‘based on the best-selling book by Helen Garner,’ but where Garner was self-reflective, Sotiris Dounoukos’s film is clinical

Is Joe Cinque’s Consolation an adaptation? The poster declares this new film as “based on the best-selling book by Helen Garner.” But I’m not buying it, and I doubt any reader of Garner’s account of the trial of Anu Singh – who fed her boyfriend Joe rohypnol-laced coffee then injected him with a fatal dose of heroin – would see this as a filmed version of the author’s well-regarded words.

In her true crime book, Garner was self-reflective. She touched on her own biases, preconceptions and emotions. She wrote of the sadness she felt from a recently failed marriage, and clearly indicated her sympathies for the victim’s parents.