Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives: Mirror

"Mirror", from 1996, is popularly regarded as the last film in the "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" canon, although it's worth noting that the slogan itself makes no appearance, suggesting that Safety On The Move were already in the process of figuring out a new campaign strategy. For now, they were still adhering to the template forged through the D&DWL series, with the final fade to black and stark white titles above the Safety On the Move logo. From a strictly formatting standpoint, "Mirror" represented a fitting enough conclusion to the campaign's run, in pursuing a "back to basics" approach, with a return to the barebones monologuing that characterised the initial wave of films from 1987. Unfortunately,"Mirror" lacks the emotional clout of "Jenny" and "Fireman's Story", seeing the series peter out with the standard whimper rather than a truly fender-bending bang. I will say that it made a significantly more effective print ad (see above) than it did a television short; I can still recall seeing that young woman's heavily scarred face glaring at me from the back of a bus, and just how rotten and uncomfortable it made me feel.

I tend to think of "Mirror" as the weakest of the D&DWL series, and not because it offers up a lower-key form of wreckage than any of its predecessors. Not every anti-drink driving PIF has to result in a pile-up with mangled bodies and shattered glass left and right, and there's certainly nothing wrong with attempting to examine how an ostensibly less dramatic accident could still prove life-changing for those who've suffered it. In the case of "Mirror", we learn how a collision caused by off-screen drink driver Nick left his girlfriend (our protagonist, who like all of those early monologuers goes unnamed) with severe facial scars, putting a dent in her self-esteem and casting a dark cloud over their relationship, which has endured, albeit for reasons other than true love conquering all. Nick, the protagonist suspects, is only with her because he feels guilty about having caused her injuries. For her part, she isn't totally unconvinced that she's with him because her facial scars have otherwise put a crimp in her social popularity.

I wouldn't call "Mirror" a total failure - if nothing else, I like how the titular object ties into the monologue in a thematic sense. The literal mirror, where our protagonist is applying make-up in a futile attempt to cover up her scars, ironically ends up becoming something of a confessional in which the unloveliness of their situation is laid bare. There's also the metaphorical sense in which Nick and the protagonist have become unwelcome reflections of one another's broken hearts and broken dreams, despite their alleged attempts to present as a functional couple. But that does lead me into my first qualm with this PIF - is it seriously suggesting, as the protagonist herself does, that the two characters are to be seen as mutually complicit in the whole sorry affair? That when the protagonist says, "It's as much my fault, I guess...", her words are to be taken at face value, with her scars representing a kind of deserved stigma for her questionable life choices? I can't help but think back to another D&DWL film, "Mates", which appeared to outright reject the insinuation that the passengers of an over-the-limit driver should bear equal responsibility if they get horribly mangled (the protagonist, fading in and out of consciousness in an intensive care ward, has this put to him by his "mate", the drink driver looking to alleviate his own guilt, but the ending makes it very clear that the film is not going for ambiguity on the matter), so it's curious that Safety On The Move should be legitimising this particular victim-blaming angle now. It's not that the passenger has no part to play when it comes to mindfulness of the driver's condition, I'm just not wild about the implication that these scars should be considered a source of shame for the protagonist, and that anybody judging her on the basis of her injuries is valid in doing so.

 

That being said, a question that repeatedly nags at me all throughout "Mirror" - and this does have the potential to alter our perception of the pivotal relationship - concerns whether or not it's possible that the protagonist is actually being gaslit by Nick into saying these things. Unlike the protagonist of "Mates" (who has no recourse to retort with anything other than heavy breathing, a response that's as damning as any explicit rebuking), might she have bought into the drink driver's attempts at self-excusing, or at the very least is prepared to play along with it in order to maintain their relationship? One of the most confounding aspects of "Mirror" is how it intermittently appears to evoke an analogy between the endangerment of your partner through drink driving and harming them through domestic violence, without seeming overly alert to the presence of this subtext. The film's opening - which has the protagonist applying make-up atop visible wounds, whilst maintaining that, "Nick - he's my boyfriend - he still feels bad about it", looks all-set to play on our immediate expectations that this will be a PIF addressing domestic violence, just as her downplaying of Nick's responsibility seems uncomfortably reminiscent of the kinds of minimisation sometimes used by victims of domestic abuse to cover for partners they feel unable to leave. Such an analogy has potential, but the impact goes unrealised, with the ad's fairly flat execution making it difficult to entertain the idea that we're being asked to interpret the monologue at anything other than the most surface of levels.

 

This ambivalent approach ultimately causes "Mirror" to come off as rather tone-deaf, particularly when we reach the end and the protagonist confides her grandest fear - that with her disfiguring injuries, it's now a choice between Nick's piteous but unloving company or total isolation. As with everything else, it's not clear if we're expected to view this as indicative of the protagonist's knocked confidence, or to be nodding along in agreement with the base assumptions that her prospects of happiness are dashed because her looks are gone and no one could possibly love her with her disfigurement. I mentioned in my coverage of "Pier" that some of the D&DWL films rely on shock value from depictions of disability that arguably reinforce their own set of prejudices, and it's much the same story with the facial scarring here. At only 30 seconds, the ad is somewhat limited in terms of how deeply it can delve into a character, but as a portrait of a victim recovering from physical and emotional trauma, it feels reductive. Pity, as opposed to empathy, is indeed what it appears to be looking to engender, and it in that regard it's not a whole lot more wholesome than her relationship with Nick.