Audrey <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/>

Audrey

This Perth Fest entry is a very black comedy with a large splosh of Muriel's Wedding about it. Ronnie Lipsick (Jackie Van Beek) has high hopes for her daughter Audrey (Josephine Blazier) to succeed as an actress. Ronnie had some of her own fame years before in Australian TV and is now stage-mothering Audrey to within an inch of her life. But Audrey is a proper arsehole to everyone, including her sister with cerebral palsy, Norah (Hannah Diviney), and her romantically conflicted father, Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), so when Audrey's melodramatic antics see her slide off the roof of the house and into a coma, the family have mixed feelings about the situation.

Ronnie incongruously decides to pose as Audrey in order to be accepted onto the acting course she had her signed up for. Nobody seems to notice, Norah begins to be more accepted by Audrey's friends (and boyfriend), and Cormack turns his meekness around, reinvigorating his sex life with Ronnie. The family feel guilty that things are better with Audrey in a coma, so what if she wakes up?

Director Natalie Bailey has a lot of TV credits to her name and just about finds the right tone here. It had some trouble finding its feet to begin with, and some of the lines didn't land but I felt it redeemed itself by the end. I had an odd feeling that I was watching Lily Tomlin in the lead, and she's (actually Van Beek) fine in a broadly unlikeable role. Something she does towards the end of the film doesn't quite ring true, in fact it seems pretty cruel, but this lurches the film deeper into uncomfortable comedy, and I'm ok with its exploration of this territory.

The sub-plot involving a hunky Christian church leader/porn director, Bourke (Aaron Fa'aoso) resolved itself in a highly fanciful way, and I thought Diviney was a revelation as put-upon little sis. The biggest laugh was probably the appearance of a former Australian of the Year, but the Christian 'marital aid' film shoots were a close second.

Audrey is screening at the Perth Festival on Dec 14 & 15 at Somerville UWA.

See also:

If you're happy to agree that Rolf de Heer's epic-WTF?! film Bad Boy Bubby (1993) is a black comedy, then have at it. A more reasonable comparison might be John Ruane's excellent Death in Brunswick (1990). Both Aussie films too.

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