Audrey (2024) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | Stealing your daughter's youth - video Dailymotion

Film Brain

Jackie van Beek is a stage mom who takes things to an extreme in this Australian dark comedy, but Film Brain isn't going to side with horrid people either way.

Transcript

00:00Jackie Van Beek is living vicariously through her daughter, literally, in the dark Australian comedy Audrey.

00:07Van Beek plays Ronnie, a once promising actor, now a stage mom to her daughter Audrey,

00:12played by Josephine Blazier, trying to get her to have the success that she always wanted,

00:16whether Audrey wants it or not.

00:19When Audrey falls into a coma, Ronnie decides to take her daughter's place to keep her career going.

00:24The bonkers premise sounds like World's Greatest Dad by way of Strangers with Candy,

00:29but the film is about that less than you might think, which is a bit of a shame,

00:33because there's some promise to a monstrously delusional main character trying to relive her past glories.

00:39Maybe it shies away from that because the logistics of a 40-something mother convincingly passing as her teen daughter for weeks

00:45isn't very plausible even for a comedy.

00:48Instead, the whole family get their own subplots, which leaves to quite a disjointed feel.

00:53The younger daughter Nora, played by Hannah Deviney, has cerebral palsy and is so overlooked

00:58that the house isn't even adapted for her as she deals with the insensitive people around her.

01:03Elsewhere, Ronnie's frustrated husband Cormac, played by Jeremy Lindsay-Taylor,

01:06spins a lie of his own to impress his crush, a Christian grief counsellor who moonlights making Bible-themed adult movies,

01:13another amusing comic conceit the film then suddenly drops.

01:17Nearly all the characters are incredibly selfish and entitled people who paint themselves as victims

01:22when confronted and that they're so terrible can be amusing so long as the film knows they're off-putting

01:28and doesn't try to make them likeable.

01:30And that's the mistake that Audrey makes.

01:33The movie starts out as a raunchy, no-holds-barred comedy taking aim at the performative behaviour

01:38people do to impress others so that they can validate themselves.

01:42But around the time the family realise the pitch-black idea they're better off without Audrey,

01:48the movie starts trying to empathise with its characters despite them being as rotten as the dying lemon tree outside their home.

01:54The final third in particular takes a sinister dramatic turn as it starts evoking the Greek myth of Medea,

02:00a shift in tone that isn't helped by the fact the filmmakers apparently want us to be cheering on what happens,

02:06or at least according to the production notes.

02:08I think, given the circumstances, I'm not supporting anyone because they're all awful narcissists

02:14and it was funnier when that was their only crime.

Audrey (2024) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | Stealing your daughter's youth

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