Their debut feature That's Not Me cost just $60,000, and after meeting with plenty of love on the festival circuit the savvy comedy is now getting a limited cinema release.

The key elements of their formula? "We went to Paris to write it. We had an inheritance. We spent 10 years building relationships," says Erdstein. In other words, sorry indie-kids, but "there is nothing prescriptive about it".

They spent nine months shooting the comedy, which Erdstein directed and Foulcher wrote and stars in, getting St Kilda to double for Los Angeles and cramming everyone's scenes bar hers into two or three-day blocks.

Like everyone else, they worked for free. Even Isabel Lucas, whom Foulcher met in an acting class a decade ago, worked for free, shooting her scenes during a visit home from Los Angeles to see her family at Christmas time.

The director of photography, Shelley Farthing-Dawe, went one better. "He brought his equipment and his crew and he put $20,000 into it as well," Foulcher says. "He's an executive-producer on it now."

Foulcher, 32, and Erdstein, 37, met at VCA a decade ago, when both were studying to become directors. Foulcher had already finished an acting degree at QUT in Brisbane, but had lost confidence in her abilities. "I wasn't feeling pretty enough, whatever," she says.

She says she was so bad in her first year at VCA that she was almost kicked out, but Erdstein says she swept the prizes in final year. "She won for directing, she won best screenplay, best film, best student overall," he says proudly. "She talks it down now but she was, and is, an incredibly talented writer and director."

Since graduating, they've made a bunch of short films under their Moccasin shingle, including the brilliantly acerbic Picking Up at Auschwitz.

That's Not Me, in which Foulcher plays acting twins Amy, whose career is soaring, and Polly, whose career is stalling, grew out of their desire to make something more substantial. "We thought we'd do it in a really lo-fi, mumble-core way. Initially we thought we'd spend $20,000 at most," says Erdstein.

His grandmother's death, and the $60,000 inheritance he received, allowed them to think bigger. So too did the eight-month artists' residency they scored in Paris, where they wrote the screenplay. Ditto the willingness of their old VCA chums to chip in.

If everyone and everything had been paid for, they say, the true cost of the film would have been around $900,000.

"We can only make this film once," says Foulcher.

"We've called in every favour," says Erdstein, who is at pains to point out that time sheets were kept. "If it goes into profit, everyone will get award wages."

The pair are self-distributing the film, which is showing on a small number of Palace screens throughout the country (Foulcher spent seven years working for the company), but it deserves to find an audience. With its well-drawn characters, sharp dialogue and thoughtful grappling with the gulf between expectation and reality in Gen Y lives, it has more than a whiff of the modern screwball comedies of Noah Baumbach??? and Greta Gerwig??? (Frances Ha, Mistress America) about it.

Gregory Erdstein and Alice Foulcher. Photo: Chris Hopkins

"My heart might explode," says Foulcher when I draw the comparison. "To say we are fans is an understatement."

"Print it," urges Erdstein, delightedly.

"What I love about Baumbach's films is they have a lot of heart, he loves his characters, but they perform it straight, the comedy comes out of the situation," Foulcher says. "The humour is a Trojan horse for a lot of interesting ideas."

Come to think of it, that's not such a bad way to describe That's Not Me - a $60,000 Trojan horse of a film, fairly bursting with comedy, humanity and interesting ideas.

That's Not Me opens on September 7, with a series of Q&A events featuring Gregory Erdstein and Alice Foulcher. Details: palacecinemas.com.au

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