‘Millie Lies Low’ review: An unexpected stay

In “Millie is lowMillie (Ana Scotney), an aspiring architect from Wellington, New Zealand, has a panic attack just before her plane takes off. After disembarking, she realizes that it will now be impossible for her to travel to New York City, where she was about to intern at a top company.

It doesn’t matter: Millie is already a seasoned fraudster – she got her scholarship by stealing ideas from her best friend, Carolyn (Jillian Nguyen) – so she uses technology to maintain the illusion that she has crossed the International Date Line as planned. She video chats with friends (forgetting to account for flight duration or time difference) and fakes photos of herself in Times Square and near the Empire State Building.

Wellington, with its steep slopes, private cable cars and ringed natural harbor, wouldn’t pass for New York if you shot it upside down and backwards, and Millie’s act gets even more complicated when she stakes out a spot near her mom’s house to poach the Wi-Fi and pitch a tent. In her first feature, the director, Michelle Savill, presents Millie’s motivations as self-destructive but understandable. Scotney, never quite looking for sympathy, plays her well.

But given that Millie starts out as an architectural plagiarism and progresses to hoaxes (stealing her boyfriend’s passport, kidnapping her own pet bunny) over the course of the film, the screenplay’s attempts to redeem face are a tough uphill climb. In the end, the film far too easily dismisses the potential interpersonal damage Millie has done.

Millie is low
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theatres.