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SOURCE-LED EDITORIAL REVIEW

That's Not Me: beyond the familiar story of memory.

That's Not Me · 2017

A source-led reading of That's Not Me as comedy: memory, creation, documented consensus, and the counterpoint that shifts the conclusion.

THE FILM EDITORIAL DESKAugust 31, 2026316 WORDS
01

THEMATIC CENTER

memory
02

NARRATIVE PRESSURE

creation
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FORM

comedy
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RECORD ANCHORS

that's · australian · australia

The record for That's Not Me yields three coordinates specific to its premise—that's, australian, and australia. That vocabulary places memory at the center and gives creation its dominant tension. It establishes a documentary baseline, not a borrowed score; criticism must still ask what the form does with that material.

That's Not Me brings memory into contact with creation through comedy. That intersection is our Fresh Take: judge the premise less by its familiarity than by how precisely that combination makes its conflict legible. The existing editorial note adds this view: A comedy best met with an open mind: rhythm, performance and the pleasure of a shared audience take centre stage.

That's Not Me (2017) arrives with the coordinates of a comédie film situated in 2010s cinema. The record credits Gregory Erdstein with the direction and places its documented performers in the foreground. With an undocumented running time, the useful question is not to invent an invisible intention, but to notice how these documented choices shape audience expectations before the first frame.

Read as comedy, the film carries the pressure of creation. Memory behaves like an edit: it selects, connects, and sometimes distorts what once appeared settled. The most precise critical test is therefore the human cost of the creative act beyond its result. A comic film is more than the immediate efficiency of a line. Its real architecture may live in reactions, silences, and the slight change in a relationship after the laugh has passed.

The twist is to treat forgetting not as an absence, but as an active force organizing the present. Instead of asking whether the film confirms the expected story of memory, the sharper question is whether it changes the person, place, or institution with the power to define it. The shift is to follow a scene after its punchline: that is often where the film reveals its real idea of the group.

THE VERDICT, REFRAMED

The wager: read comic timing as a form of social truth. Here, memory changes meaning under the pressure of creation.

THE DOCUMENTARY STARTING POINT

That's Not Me is a 2017 Australian independent comedy film directed by Gregory Erdstein. It was filmed between 2015 and 2016 in Melbourne, Australia, and Los Angeles, US. The screenplay was written by Gregory Erdstein and lead actress Alice Foulcher. That's Not Me had its world premiere in February 2017 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and its Australian premiere in June 2017 at the Sydney Film Festival. It was released theatrically at selected cinemas across Australia in September 2017. In 2020 That's Not Me was nominated for the AACTA Byron Kennedy Award, as one of the top 12 indie feature films of the past decade.

Original review by The Film Editorial Desk. No audience testimony or independent critic identity is fabricated.
Year
2017
Runtime
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Direction
Gregory Erdstein
Performers
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