Director: Samuel Abrahams
Writer: Samuel Abrahams, Miranda Campbell Bowling
Stars: Sian Clifford, Laurie Kynaston, Juliet Cowan
Synopsis: Lady Isabella, aspires to be in the spotlight, and local talent show ‘Stately Stars’ provides her a break. However, high pressures and a loss of self lead to a surreal situation on her grand estate.
The mockumentary format has been done. We have seen a lot of iterations of it in the past, some great, some not so great, but it’s rare to get what feels like something in progress. This turns a mockumentary into something like found footage. It’s like a discovery of something we weren’t supposed to see. These ideas meld and coalesce into the wonderfully weird film, Lady.
A feeling of the uncanny comes on slowly. It builds out of the tension of strange character revelations and revelations about why the camera crew led by director Sam (Laurie Kynaston) is actually at the manor. The wit and hilarity of writers Samuel Abrahams and Miranda Campbell Bowling’s script is well balanced with the strangeness and metaphorical nature of the story. Lady could have easily had just mile a minute gags and it would have been very satisfying, but the deeper layers of the story are what make it exceptional.
The other piece of that puzzle is the lady herself, Sian Clifford as Isabella. Isabella could have been one note. She could have had a couple of great gags and been a complete windbag and we would have all laughed just as much. Yet, the way Clifford is able to use her uncanny sense of timing, makes the character more fully realized than the self proclaimed self-centered woman of privilege we see in the first scenes. As Isabella’s story and bizarre condition progresses we see the humanity and the tragedy of her. This unpacking of her character is not just about humanizing a one percenter, but understanding the human behind the materials with which she surrounds herself. Clifford strikes the perfect balance between Isabella’s daffiness and her tragic story. It’s a performance that builds our empathy for Isabella even as she shows her worst self to us.
The shift from comedy to tragedy and back again isn’t unearned and the film’s catharsis leaves us uplifted. Though, it often feels as if the film rushes through some bits. There are places where we’re told to feel sorry for Sam or Isabella without being able to feel it ourselves. There are places where the switch flicks so quickly that it can feel false. We start to feel like our emotional response is reacting to a lie rather than a truth.
It’s exemplified in the film as well when Sam shoots the visual pieces that will go along with Isabella’s performance that she will do at the Stately Stars talent show. The visual components are rather silly out of context. Yet, instead of treating his subject with respect, Sam giggles at Isabella’s actions. It takes a while for us to understand what these scenes will mean, but we’re meant to laugh at them then and feel heartbreak at them later. It’s not quite as harsh as shaming us for laughing at the first iteration, but it is about understanding that the raw emotion is not as comprehensible as the whole formed from the parts. It’s a bit like a house. You make a judgement based on the outside, but the inside can tell an entirely different story.
Lady includes as a character in its own right, a classic English manor house. It’s rather glorious from the surrounding grounds to the magnificent structure of the house. Yet, the inside is such a strange hodgepodge of hoarder and English upper crust order that it boggles the mind. Production designer Agnieszka Debska and set decorator Sian Molloy pulled together some incredible locations for the film’s action to take place. One of the best shots isn’t a straight joke or a scene with any dialogue, but it shows the strangeness of the opulence of this place. Isabella is sitting down to breakfast. The camera is in a medium close up and then cinematographer Korsshan Schlauer and director Abrahams zoom out slowly. The wall behind Isabella fills with a few dozen plates, dishes, and platters all patterned differently and intricately, while we also see the tremendous length of the table Isabella is sitting at, alone and fidgety. Then Sam walks in and the dynamic changes.
That’s how Lady pulls off its wonderful tricks. We think we’re seeing one thing and then it’s revealed we didn’t know the whole of the scene. We don’t know the breadth and scope until it’s revealed at the perfect moment. Lady is much more than a comedy, but it is a very funny comedy indeed. The story is unique and the performances are all so incredibly timed and beautifully executed. It’s a delightful and emotional film that should be seen and enjoyed by everyone.
