Monica Dolan

Kelly Macdonald

Gina McKee

Kieran Bew

Christine Bottomley

Judith Chandler

Gary Bates

Orla Cottingham

Dawn Butler

Kya Brame

Anand Toora

Pauline Whitaker

Neal Barry

Issam Al Ghussain

Gavin Kitchen

Paul Hamilton

Joanne Allen

Christine Anderson

Carol Morley

Reno Antoniades

Sophie MacClancy

Shaheen Baig

Jane Campion

Ameenah Ayub Allen

Agnès Godard

Anne Sheehan

Cairo Cannon

Oisín O'Neill

Jane Levick

Tyrone Walker-Hebborn

Liz Simpson

Natalie Ward

Rebecca Powell

John P Gleeson

Carly Paradis

Chris Lyons

Peter Hampden

Norman Merry

Stephen Craighill

Maria Logan

Alex Mackie

Mary Cooke

Claire Whiteley

Drama

Comedy

Typist Artist Pirate King

Cannon and Morley Productions

MBK Productions

United Kingdom

CinemaSerf

This is actually quite a difficult film to review. I thought the performances here, especially from Monica Dolan as "Audrey" but also of Kelly Macdonald as "Sandra" were really quite poignant. The former is a lady with mental health issues, the latter is her psychiatric helper. "Audrey", who believes she is terminally ill, has moments of amazing lucidity followed by moments of violent temper tantrums and almost hallucinatory conversations with people real and imaginary whilst "Sandra" finds herself drawn more into her turbulent world, and more determined to try to make a difference. "Audrey" makes frequent reference to her friend "Dorothy" (Gina McKee) and so "Sandra" agrees to drive her to try and find her - in the hope that it might offer some degree of explanation and maybe even closure for her clearly pained companion. Along the way they push each other to the limits of exasperation and frustration, leaving "Sandra" emotionally exhausted but still undaunted after a period in which most of us, I suspect, would have jumped ship. The story itself, and the production I liked much less. It cannot have had much of a budget and in my opinion too much was left to the roller-coaster characterisations, abandoning the look and feel of the film to that rather basic, filmed early on a Sunday morning, style. It's twenty minutes too long and is extremely dialogue heavy. Whilst some of that is entertaining as well as challenging, it also never gives the audience time for the odd breather so we can actually absorb some of the information we are being pretty relentlessly bombarded with. It's thought provoking and don't expect an easy watch - do expect a BAFTA nomination for Monica Dolan though, she's very good.

Typist Artist Pirate King

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