Karl Puschmann: Can you handle the high cringe level of Millie Lies Low?

Ana Scotney stars in Millie Lies Low, in cinemas now.

Humiliation and deep shame drive the action in the squirmingly enjoyable new local film Millie Lies Low. It's a movie that will test the limit of how much cringe you can handle as its heroine Millie plunges lower and lower into a web of lies and deception of her own making.

It all starts with extreme panic and only gets worse from there. Instead of flying to New York to start an internship at a well-respected and swanky architecture firm, Millie has the mother of all freakouts that ends with her being escorted off the plane.

Once her anxiety levels return to normal the social and professional consequences of her meltdown hit and she rushes to the airline desk to book a seat on the next flight where she immediately encounters a problem; the only flight she can afford is three days away.

Having made a big to-do about leaving, and been celebrated as a student on the fast track to fame and fortune, Millie now feels like a bit of a loser. Unable to face her friends or family due to embarrassment and a sense that she's let them all down, she decides to lay low and wait out the three days.

Of course, in this age of social media and Zoom calls, falling off the grid is not an option, forcing Millie into an elaborate ruse to convince her pals that she's having the time of her life in NYC and not roughing it on the inner city streets of Wellington.

"A new adventure begins!!!" she writes on Instagram after copying and pasting an image of an aeroplane window she found on Google, before her deception quickly balloons into photoshopping herself in front of various landmarks and making video calls in front of a brick wall in a back alley and pretending it's her chic NY apartment.

As she scuttles about the city with her hoodie up and her dark shades on she has a series of close encounters that threaten to give her game away. But she also finds reasons to stalk her friends, crashing a costume party in disguise and sneaking into her boyfriend's room when she begins to get suspicious that he's fooling around now that she's supposedly out of town.

The film does a great job of getting you onside with Millie before methodically peeling away layers to expose deeper uncomfortable truths about her with each of these encounters. We soon learn that Millie's life of lies began years before her panic attack on the plane and that she's no stranger to deception.

As the internally complex Millie, Ana Scotney effortlessly brings to life the complexities of the character, swapping from a very real and desperate anxiety when things are going wrong to conveying a sly thrill as the people in her life fall for her sham New York lifestyle.

The bottom, when she finally hits it, is so embarrassingly and thoroughly awful that you can't help but feel some of her shame burning on your own cheeks while also breathing deep sighs of relief that it is all happening to someone else. It's a very funny moment, albeit in the most cringe-inducing way possible, but one that also packs an unexpected emotional wallop.

From its simple idea, which is loosely based on the real-life experience of co-writer and director Michelle Savill, the movie examines the pressures of social media and how the burdens of success and the weight of expectation can lead people into extremely dark and deceptive places.

Millie Lies Low is a purposefully uncomfortable watch, but never an unenjoyable one. A contradiction perhaps, but one that aligns with its awkward protagonist. And that's the truth.