SFF NOTES: Tickled (2016, Dirs. David Farrier, Dylan Reeve)

Tickled is the latest "down the rabbit-hole" doco to gain traction on the festival circuit and it is already well on its way to breaking mainstream. That's a good thing since the notoriety should give the film makers, Kiwis David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, some sort of open cover from the barrage of litigation that continues to come their way.

What set it all off? A little story about "competitive endurance tickling". Sometimes it is the small things.

Back in 2014, Farrier, who is a pop-culture journalist working out of Auckland, dropped a story online after stumbling on a vid of five hot young things in Adidas kit tying and tickling each other at length. He dropped the film's production company, Jane O'Brien Media a Facebook message to line up an interview. He was greeted by an email screed of homophobic vitriol. The story went viral. And out came the lawyers.

Farrier was, as you will be, intrigued by the fact that tickling could be the source of such abuse. Braving the threats, he and his mate travel to the US to get to the bottom of it all.

Needless to say, things get freaky, freaking quickly.

Though Farrier and Reeves' journey gives the film a compelling structure (one that even they, being caught up in it, are consistently surprised by), they've also done well in cementing the film with some level of formalism. Through this they manage to balance the ambush-journo personality of their approach with some more sensitive, sometimes even moving, investigative background.

Tickled is one of those rare documentaries that raises as many questions as it answers and yet still feels as complete as it needs to be, notwithstanding the ongoing legal threats. The exposé touches on themes of big money buying immunity, which opens comparisons to HBO's recent documentary mini-series 'The Jinx', something that hasn't been missed by the network itself, which has picked up the film for screening later this year.

But get it on the festival circuit and you can be part of the story - apparently spies are still being sent in to record the post-film Q+A sessions to relay any potentially libelous statements back overseas.

There's sure to be more as the story unfolds. And it is quite the story. See it as soon as you get the chance.

★★★★

Trailer:

Tickled screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.