Worth: $17.50
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Cast:
Monica Dolan, Kelly Macdonald
Intro:
Wonderfully warm and well paced …
Schizophrenia got in the way of Audrey Ammis’ art career. The British artist was unknown in her lifetime. She didn’t quite finish her art studies in the 1950s at London’s esteemed Royal Academy, and trained as a shorthand typist instead, later working as a civil servant. Only after her death in 2013, did her work become more widely known.
Typist Artist Pirate King sees Audrey (Monica Dolan) go on a fictional road trip with her psychiatric nurse, Sandra (Kelly Macdonald). While the premise is concocted, the film depicts Audrey’s real struggles, personality and works – from her child-like scribbles to her beautiful paintings.
This film engages immediately, with Audrey assisting a cockroach that’s found itself upside down. Nurse Sandra – who will reveal that she has problems of her own – enters the picture early and it’s clear that Audrey has nothing but disdain for the psychiatric system. She refuses medications, even though she thinks her neighbours are interfering with her sexually via remote control. Audrey also believes that she is dying and wants to deliver her artworks to a gallery for an exhibition. The gallery is “local”, she tells Sandra – but not, as it turns out, local to their London base, but local to Audrey’s childhood home, some five hours’ drive north in Sunderland.
From London to Sunderland, the journey touches on significant times in Audrey’s life – almost every stranger that she encounters she thinks she knows. Her mental illness often comes to the fore, yet she’s witty, observant, and self-aware. She’s an extraordinary character and Dolan is magnificent in the role – it would have been easy to go over the top as Audrey, but Dolan keeps it real. Meanwhile, Macdonald’s Sandra is appropriately understated.
Although the relationship between Audrey and her nurse morphs from being patient and nurse to two friends, maybe more could have been revealed about Sandra, who we never really know too much about. Also largely hidden is the English countryside – this could have been a much more scenic road movie. But what writer/director Carol Morley gets right is the script, which is robust and occasionally very funny.
Wonderfully warm and well paced, keep an eye out for a set of photo booth snaps, seemingly abandoned by the person who was photographed before Audrey and Sandra’s session. This set of photographs are of the real Audrey Amiss.
