Natalie Bailey’s black comedy Audrey knows the audience will hate almost every character in the film and yet relies on them getting behind their hideous behaviour and all its pettiness for the guilty guffaws. Ronnie Willis (Jackie van Beek) is a forgotten prime time soap actress who won a Logie a lifetime ago for her role on Jillaroo (think McLeod’s Daughters). Recently she’s been teaching Monkey Grip in her home acting studio to confused primary school kids and stage parenting her eldest daughter, Audrey (Josephine Blazier) through whom she’s trying to relive her heyday. Parenting Audrey is all Ronnie seems to have time for, and the entire household revolves around the self-absorbed teen. Dad, Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor) works as a handyman but puts as little effort into keeping the household liveable as he can – including not making it wheelchair accessible for their younger teen Norah (Hannah Diviney) who has cerebral palsy. Cormack is more concerned with his erectile dysfunction and depression.
Audrey loathes her family, and the feeling is mutual although only spoken aloud by Norah, “She’s a psychopath!” Audrey is planning an escape as soon as she finishes high school. Instead of auditioning for Dramatic Arts at University, she’s going to build houses for people in Nepal with her ‘sensitive artiste’ boyfriend, Max (Fraser Anderson). “We’re going to do something amazing with our white privilege!” Audrey brags to Norah and then passes some of Norah’s painkillers she stole to Max.
Ronnie gets a call from one of Audrey’s many drama teachers. She’s been skipping her expensive classes. Shouting takes place and Audrey decides to give a performance on the roof decrying her horrible family. The neighbours heckle her to jump, and Ronnie coaches her to use her fear to practice her ‘Greeks’. Audrey falls of the roof, hits a lemon tree, and goes into a coma.
Ronnie pays almost no attention to how serious her daughter’s condition is. It’s a tragedy for Ronnie after all the hard work and money she’s sunk into Audrey, especially an upcoming masterclass with Lucinda Dorbitrov (Gael Ballantyne). Audrey can’t lose her place in the class, so Ronnie registers as Audrey. When no one particularly cares that a woman in her undefined forties is pretending to be a teenager, Ronnie decides she will be Audrey Lipsick. “Audrey’s” success is Ronnie’s responsibility.
At school Norah finds herself suddenly courted by the in crowd. Andy (Tiare Brooks) and Irene (Jenda St James) want her to be involved in a special concert celebrating Audrey. “Let Audrey Live” is an opportunity for the performative students to opportunistically perform their grief for their ‘beloved’ Audrey. Max is paying close attention to her (too close), and finally Ronnie has money for the fencing lessons Norah has been wanting for ages.
Cormack’s libido is resurrected via an affair he has with Christian pornographer Bourke (Aaron Fa’aoso) for whom he is doing shelving at the support centre he runs. Things are even spicing up in the bedroom (and Audrey’s hospital room) between Cormack and Ronnie. They haven’t had this much fun since a certain Logies party with ‘Larry’ back in 2006. Cormack even manages to fix the bathroom so Norah can get in and out with her wheelchair. Audrey’s coma is the best thing that has happened to the Willis/Lipsick family. In fact, it is so good that everyone begins to wonder if it would be better if Audrey never woke up at all.
It isn’t a matter of simple internal wish fulfilment with the Willis/Lipsick family. Cormack tells a support group run by Bourke that Ronnie killed Audrey so he’s now a widower and he has lost his only child (no mention of Norah). Ronnie is now literally reliving her dreams through Audrey. Only Norah is beginning to see some of the downside of Audrey’s life after an encounter with sleazy Matt who plays soft and wounded to get into her pants and then plays wounded and soft to everyone else by telling them she seduced him and ‘reverse raped’ him.
Lou Sanz’s satirical script is informed by the Gold Coast setting. Sunny, vacuous, and far too self-important -the southern Queensland ‘Paradise’ is Australia’s Bali purchased dental veneers in both the entertainment industry and in the financially better off population. It reeks of falsity with the beautiful beaches shadowed by prefab high-rises casting their shadows on the shoreline. Like Audrey and her family (apart from Norah) if the surface is scratched there’s nothing much to Australia’s tinsel-town but narcissism and a grasping desire for validation.
Audrey wakes up and goes into hyper-revenge mode on her family. Ringing a little bell day in and day out demanding they cater to her every need (something they had been doing previously but not as patently). Audrey is out to ruin them all and do so as cruelly as she can imagine, and her imagination is not limited. She taunts Ronnie who sadly watches her Logie acceptance speech from her glory days after Audrey has made a TikTok exposing her mother’s attempts to be ‘her’. “What if like you back then, I’m also faking it. You created me. This monster. This clone. Set to destroy your dreams.”
That’s the core of Audrey – Ronnie made Audrey in her image, but she can’t control her creation. In a brilliant turn of meta-textual delight Ronnie’s notoriety has her playing Euripides’ Medea (with actual sheep and in Australian ranch costuming). A final showdown between Frankenstein and her creature takes place directed by Gael. A brilliant deus ex machina of surreal absurdity is the pièce de resistance of the film’s blacker than black comedy.
Jackie van Beek is hilarious as the horrible ‘mother of the year’ whose main concern is if “What if all the things ‘TV Week’ wrote about me weren’t true.” It isn’t as if Ronnie Willis was ever going to be a Margot Robbie (“Oh no, she’s actually good,” says Gael) or a Cate Blanchett. She was destined to be ordinary despite her career coming to an end when she got pregnant. Life is great when Audrey isn’t around. Cormack’s affair with Bourke becomes part of the Lipsick family lifestyle. Ronnie is given a spot on a reality show. But it’s all so third-rate. The only person who really seems to get what is going on is Norah who didn’t ever deserve to be treated as poorly as she was by anyone in the family. Hannah Diviney’s droll and dry sarcasm is a delight.
Audrey is utterly bonkers and hilarious. Natalie Bailey and Lou Sanz make the audience complicit in wanting the film to keep pushing as far as it does and then laughing in delight when it goes further than they imagine. It’s not often Australian comedies play to the bitter and contemptible echoing the work of Todd Solondz. They’re sometimes infused with darkness but they’re generally good-natured affairs. There’s nothing good-natured about Audrey and that’s what makes it a rollicking good time.
Director: Natalie Bailey
Cast: Jackie van Beek, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Hannah Diviney, Josephine Blazier
Writer: Lou Sanz
Producers: Diya Eid, Dan Lake, Shannon Wilson, Michael Wrenn
Music: Alex Cameron
Cinematography: Simon Ozolins
Editor: Katrina Barker
