IR Film Review: SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT DYING [Oscilloscope]
The essence of a internal movie with a protagonist like Fran in the movie: "Sometimes I Think About Dying" is creating a character piece that simply shows a slice of life, however quiet it might be. Daisy Ridley plays Fran with a vulnerable fragility, somewhere between a manic depressive and a creative person exploring her own world inside herself. The intimacy of her thoughts brings to mind a more muted version of Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides". And yet Fran is not vindictive in many ways. She just doesn't want to deal with certain situations or know how to deal with them. However, Ridley plays her with an earnestness and yet a distance. She wants to be loved but she isn't quite sure of how to approach love or if she even wants to. The pace of the movie is pretty much slack but in many ways that is what it is meant to be. The film was shot and is set in Astoria, Oregon so the quite lanes, ships and streetlights add to its wistfullness. The film illustrates Fran's possible thoughts of suicide and yet she says that she doesn't really want that.
She just wants to know how it would feel but likely is afraid to. In her mind, that torrent of emotion might be too much. You see that briefly in one scene in a car with a man whom she gets to know from work. Again she wants to test the waters of humanity but doesn't think she can handle it. The movie doesn't go into any of her backstory and keeps that part of Fran a mystery allowing the audience to place their own perceptions on it (which is a pretty rare element in today's movies). The movie brings to mind the mumblecore movement of cinema but with less mumble (despite some very chatty office scenes which Fran tends to witness but not involve herself with). The abstract essences of her in a forest or on a beach draped in a dying pose tend to project a need to be remember edor a context of the mythic (which is also interesting if you corrolate it similarly to Ridley's Rey in "Star Wars"). "Sometimes I Think About Dying" is a coordinated but effectively challenging move for Ridley playing her outside a comfort zone, American accent and all, as a girl just searching or being what she wants to be. B
By Tim Wassberg
