Humans crave connection—that goes without saying. Just as we drink water, eat food, and seek shelter, we also reach for one another. James Litchfield’s Alphabet Lane takes that notion to a remote corner of New South Wales, exploring the slow ache of isolation and the strange, tender ways people find it—a film that lives between the lines, where meaning is carried in glances, pauses, and the stories we tell instead of the truths we say aloud.

The narrative follows Anna (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) and Jack (Nicholas Denton), who trade the noise of Sydney for the stillness of the Australian countryside. Isolated from friends, family, and the pulse of the city, they have only each other. While their opposing schedules as a doctor and an engineer leave them living side by side, they’re never quite together. In the rare moments they do share, like the occasional meal or a brief window in between shifts, not much is said because, frankly, not much is happening. It’s in that quiet that the monotony of their reality leaves space for the imaginary to take hold. Perhaps out of a need for diversion, or simply to fill the silence with something resembling connection, they begin to construct a story. Jack invents a fictitious friend, ‘Joe,’ and Anna gives him a wife, ‘Michelle.’ What begins as an innocent joke, however, soon twists in unexpected ways, with a slow-burn setup that shifts into something that catches both them and the audience off guard.

What makes Litchfield’s debut film so compelling isn’t the eccentricity of this premise (intriguing though it may be), but the way it teases themes of loneliness and intimacy with restraint. The imaginary pair become a vessel of connection the couple so desperately crave, allowing Anna and Jack to project the things they can’t admit directly as small bursts of affection, flickers of doubt, even conflict are all played out at a safe distance. The beauty of Litchfield’s approach is how quietly this game seeps into their reality, until the lines between what’s invented and what’s felt are barely distinguishable. It’s this delicate overlap that the film finds its power, showing how intimacy clings on in the most unexpected forms.

Litchfield also makes full use of the Australian countryside, not only capturing striking stills of the landscape but using its vastness to set the tone of the couple’s solitude. The film’s early, widescreen glimpses of empty spaces frame Anna and Jack against a landscape that feels both breathtaking and suffocating, heightening the sense of being cut off from belonging. Cooma may be beautiful in reality, but within the film its name is never spoken—a choice that, to me, feels deliberate, stripping the place of specificity and leaving it recognisable yet detached, as if severed from the rest of the world.

Alongside Litchfield’s artistic choices, the performances ground the film. Cobham-Hervey and Denton bring a lived-in authenticity, with their accents and mannerisms lending a distinctly Australian texture without ever tipping into caricature. More importantly, rather than chasing heightened drama, they allow silence and raw emotion to carry the weight, which feels fitting for a story about distance and longing. The soundtrack, meanwhile, effectively underlines the film’s mood, though its repetition sometimes dulls the impact. Still, for a debut feature, it shows a clear sense of atmosphere, even if it could benefit from greater variation.

It’s also worth mentioning that at its world premiere at MIFF, Litchfield remarked that Alphabet Lane was “written around COVID.” While it never addresses the pandemic directly, the film carries the unmistakable texture of that time: when routines felt airless, intimacy was both magnified and strained, and the smallest interactions seemed to take on outsized meaning. It lingers in that atmosphere of quiet disconnection, living in “a sense of what many of us experienced,” as Litchfield put it.

In the end, Alphabet Lane resists neat conclusions, preferring instead to leave its silences open for the audience to interpret. Litchfield himself has said he wants each viewer to walk away with their own meaning, and that openness feels true to the film’s spirit. Whatever meaning you may take from Alphabet Lane, one thing remains certain: it marks the arrival of a striking new voice in Australian cinema.