by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jackie van Beek, Hannah Diviney, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Josephine Blazier, Aaron Fa’aoso
Intro:
… truly and almost-miraculously deranged.
Audrey is a film that starts out completely bonkers, and then just keeps spiralling from there. Its initial premise is a darkly comic conceit, with failing actress and helicopter mum Ronnie (Jackie van Beek) assuming the identity of her comatose teenaged daughter Audrey (Josephine Blazier), in hopes of reclaiming her own acting career. With this sociopathic reality and commentary on trophy parenting, the filmmakers could have just coasted on pushing that button for all its worth, but as the story continues, this aspect winds up being one of the film’s tamer developments.
Through its exasperatingly unlikeable characters and humour that isn’t so much out of pocket as it is out of clothes entirely, the camp levels throughout are pitched high and utterly bewildering from scene to scene. Audiences are likely to either become quickly put-off by its relentlessness in squeezing potential cackles out of fundamentally broken individuals, or will meet its unruly wavelength and hold onto this endurance test for dear life.
While van Beek isn’t in the writer’s room here (this is written by Lou Sanz), it fits easily into her growing pedigree for films that break down tropes and cliches that many have (begrudgingly) accepted as normal. The Breaker Upperers deconstructed the contrived third-act almost-break-up found in most rom-coms, Nude Tuesday made a mockery of cinematic dialogue entirely, and with Audrey, her, Sanz, and director Natalie Bailey seem to have their sights set on the trope commonly referred to as Women In Refrigerators. Put simply, it describes the act of having horrible and usually demeaning things happening to a supporting character of a story (typically a woman), not as a means of furthering their own character, but as a form of cheap ‘inspiration’ for the character arc of the main character (typically a man and usually one that the woman is romantically involved with or related to).
Here, that manifests in the way that Audrey’s stint in a coma ends up becoming the impetus for not just her mother, but also her father Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor) and her sister Norah (Hannah Diviney) to take advantage of the situation. Audrey gets another shot at acting, Cormack finds an outlet for his sexual frustrations, and Norah gets to experience life as something other than the disabled also-ran in this household.
It’s Norah’s inclusion that ultimately helps the entirety of the film make sense, sticking out as a life preserver in an ocean of mutton dressed as lamb, Biblically-accurate pornography, and surprisingly satisfying impromptu nose jobs. While she isn’t immune from poor decision-making, her actions are the most humanised and treated with empathy, giving the film the closest thing it has to a protagonist. Diviney’s performance is a major factor in that appeal, wielding her fencing foil of a tongue to hit the weak point of every scathing remark and fitting reaction to those of others. She is the lead star of the Semblance Of Sanity Freakshow, while everyone else are understudies at the Worst Of Humanity Touring Company.
Audrey is a work of such sheer absurdity and mind-blowing gumption that any and all of what has been written above could well be the last desperate act of the mad to find something about this that even resembles our Earth logic. There’s method to its madness through clever utilisation of classic theatre, blunt but effective metaphors, and damning statements on the depths of desperation that people can sink to. But attempts to override the recurring mental loop of “What in the John Waters blunt rotation am I watching?!” with pesky things like logic feel anathema to the sheer joy of witnessing something so truly and almost-miraculously deranged. If you can vibe with the audacity of Bobcat Goldthwait’s directorial efforts, or can find the horror, humour, and heart in works like The Loved Ones and The Greasy Strangler, chances are that this is your cup of suspicious-tasting lemonade. Take the ticket, and ride the ride; you may not like it, but you absolutely won’t forget it.
