Fran is the quiet woman at the office. She shows up on time, works on her spreadsheets and puts in cursory appearances for team meetings and celebrations. But as soon as she can grab a plate of cake, she slinks back to her cubicle where she clearly hopes to be left alone. Many days, she doesn’t make a peep beyond a monosyllabic greeting. Whatever personality she possesses is kept hidden away, not only from her officemates but also from the audience. Thus begins the depiction of this young woman’s life in Sometimes I Think About Dying, a thoughtful and immersive exploration of loneliness and interiority from director Rachel Lambert. We don’t know exactly what Fran (Daisy Ridley) is feeling, but, it seems, neither does Fran.
Our only glimpses into the inner life of this quietly intense person involve the daydreams in which she indulges where she lies in a beam of sunlight in a verdant glade, body slack, eyes flat and lifeless. These visions of death present the only moments of color and natural abundance in the otherwise grey and inert environment of her seaside town. The story, by Stefanie Abel Horowitz, Kevin Armento and Katy Wright-Mead, toggles between the vividness of Fran’s morbid daydreams and the dreariness of her daily life. When a charming new coworker shows up at the office, viewers might expect things to be shaken up. Robert (Dave Merheje) does indeed catch Fran’s attention, but things don’t go the way a typical romantic-comedy might take them. Spoiler alert: it’s not that kind of movie.
Instead, Fran takes tentative steps to lean into Robert’s guileless sociability. They go to a movie, then share a piece of pie and an awkward conversation. There’s no moment of breakthrough where Fran’s reserve suddenly melts. Instead, she warms to him in tiny gestures but remains essentially herself. That’s the core message of this downbeat but cautiously optimistic story: there’s nothing wrong with Fran that needs to be fixed. Here she is eating a simple dinner in silence while staring into space, then climbing into bed and waiting to fall asleep. Rinse and repeat for the next day, and the day after that. Whatever shadow is hanging over her‒depression, loneliness, apathy‒can’t be uprooted or counteracted by anyone’s will but her own. And maybe, her affect suggests, she doesn’t even want anything to change.
Dustin Lane’s cinematography artfully represents Fran’s frame of mind through compositions that box her in or isolate her among the banal furniture and airless rooms she occupies. Sharp-eyed production design spans an infinite spectrum of beiges and grays. The ever-drizzling backdrop of Astoria, Oregon suggests an apt metaphor for Fran’s presence: a cold and muted beauty, with the possibility‒but no guarantee‒of sunnier days to come. Daisy Ridley is an actor of great expressiveness and physical vitality, as evidenced by her starring role in the recent Star Wars trilogy, but here she plays entirely against that type. Instead, we see curiosity and yearning in her eyes as she peeks around her cubicle or smiles guardedly in Robert’s presence, but very little of that emotion transforms into action or initiative. It’s a tightly controlled performance, hinting at deep feeling that only surfaces in awkward bursts at inopportune moments.
Late in the film, Fran makes a confession that represents a step toward unburdening herself. It’s not a dramatic flourish of sun bursting through the clouds, but it does represent the completion of an arc for the almost pathologically taciturn character. Sometimes I Think About Dying is not a story of grand gestures, true love or wise people fixing broken people. Instead, it’s an observation of a quiet life that seeks to remain quiet. It’s a subtly subversive message for a film which resembles a romantic-comedy but isn’t one: be yourself, because you’re already good enough.
Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Pictures
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