‘Audrey’ Review – Unpleasant Comedy Fails Interesting Premise [SXSW 2024]

Audrey is a difficult film to gauge, on any scale. What opens dramatically ends dramatically, yet fills the large gap between the introduction and conclusion with varied attempts at irreverent, occasionally thoughtful, and constantly provocative comedy. A story in far too many parts to count, this one is a confusing, unpleasant miss most of the way through.

What makes this one most grievous is perhaps its failing of a promising premise. The idea that a mother, who is a former actress and well out of her prime, takes her daughter falling into a coma as an opportunity to give her dreams of stardom another shot by assuming her daughter’s identity and pretending to be two decades younger than she actually is, is brilliant. But that stuff only makes up a fraction of the film, and so the final result is equivalently fractured.

For the first 30 minutes (give or take), it comes off as rather harmless. That foreboding opening, followed by a round of spitfire jokes, sets the tone for a decent first stretch. In comparison to the way the film eventually unfolds, it’s subtle and fairly enjoyable. But Audrey teeters off the edge around the halfway point, failing to achieve any consistency in any way. It goes from loose, compressed dramedy to utterly confusing, genre-less disarray in moments. 

The film isn’t a total loss. It’s a technically efficient effort; the camera waits for characters to move before it does. Shots often creep along, holding for something unexpected to break the scene and the frame at once, substantiating the tension and maximizing whatever single-scene schtick is the focus at the time. The colors are intentional and pop, made even better by sharp lighting and stratified set design. Visually well-planned and executed, without a doubt. 

The performances are up to scratch across the board, too. The film’s stage-play subtext melds with this cast in an especially soapy way that does everyone a big favor, and, among little else, makes this one stand out. Consider also the chaptered subtitles that elegantly grace the screen on occasion, and you’ve got a distinctly eccentric style on display, one that could’ve carried this one much further if the story itself made similar strides.

But Audrey has a serious identity crisis on the page. For what is predominantly a comedy, the jokes are nearly all borrowed from a better source. There isn’t one single thread here that hasn’t been sewn elsewhere; it reaps and borrows without wonder as to the consequences, though they all follow shortly after. Worse, the film isn’t just trying to jostle laughs and carry on when the credits roll; built-in to Audrey is an outdated cultural commentary that serves a multitude of unpleasant sequences that feel both confused and incomplete. That could be a purposeful sensation, and while there is potential value in discomfort, it can’t be found here. 

Undergirding the film the entire way is a broken family, exacerbated by social pressures of every conceivable kind. This is where much of that subtext stems from, in addition to a helping of uneasy religious queries and questionable notes on disability. By the end, nearly all of it is rendered useless in the face of a hapless conclusion.

On the surface, the final scene is edited like a nightmare. The intention is clear, but the choppy, psychedelic nature of it is far removed from the quasi-realistic tone that had been set up to that point. Similarly, the narrative focus narrows to a minimal point of near non-recognition; things circle back to an extent in the few moments that follow, but it isn’t enough to patch up what acts as the dreadful cherry on top. The list goes on for Audrey and, unfortunately, it can’t overcome it’s self-inflicted wounds.

Audrey had its World Premiere at SXSW 2024 in the Narrative Feature Competition section.

Director: Natalie Bailey

Rated: NR

Runtime: 97m