SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT DYING
FILM
Death becomes her: Fran (Daisy Ridley).
Wth new work colleague Robert (Dave Merheje)
Not the life and soul of the (office) party.
DAISY RIDLEY DIES HARD
★★★
OUT 19 APRIL / CERT TBC / 91 MINS
DIRECTOR Rachel Lambert
CAST Daisy Ridley, Dave Merheje, Parvesh Cheena, Marcia DeBonis
PLOT Fran (Ridley) lives a closed-off, buttoned-up life. But when Robert (Merheje) starts work in her drab office, she tentatively tries to connect.
IT CAN BE difficult, when making a film about a depressed, disconnected character, not to make a depressing film that is hard to connect with. Happily, Rachel Lambert’s indie centres around a really effective Daisy Ridley performance, hinting at just enough inner light to keep you watching even when things get a bit gloomy. Ridley plays Fran, an office worker in a coastal Oregon town who takes pride in her faculty with spreadsheets. She keeps herself at a remove from her co-workers, barely speaking in the office and floating around her home like a ghost. The closely observed office scenes —the struggle of thinking of a heartfelt message for a colleague’s leaving card, enduring ice-breaking exercises at a meeting —stand in contrast to the dreaminess of Fran’s visions of death. As the title promises, she daydreams about her end.