Audrey review – a deliciously snarky comedy about a girl in a coma

The family of the titular teenager in Audrey don’t literally pop champagne when she tumbles from the roof and falls into a coma, though they might as well have: this deliciously snarky black comedy makes it brutally clear they prefer it when she’s in a vegetative state, unable to give them grief.

The film mercilessly flogs the “we’re glad she’s in a coma” joke and yet it continues to be funny – partly because of the drollery of Lou Sanz’s script, which is filled with gallows humour; partly because of the pacing, which hits a good rhythm, feeling quick but never rushed; partly because of the cast, who are oddly endearing despite portraying people behaving very badly; and of course because of Natalie Bailey’s direction, which creates a tone that feels both pointy and a bit out of sorts.

The characters tend to act boldly and selfishly, none more entertainingly so than Audrey’s mother Ronnie (Jackie van Beek), who pretends to be her (comatose) daughter so she can enlist in her acting classes, hoping this will reboot her once-promising career. Audrey’s father, Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), experiences a sexual reawakening, enjoying a rather niche interest in Christian-themed pornograpy and having an affair with one of its, er, auteurs. And Audrey’s sister Norah (Hannah Diviney), who has cerebral palsy and feels overshadowed by her sibling, is enjoying the newfound attention, including from Audrey’s boyfriend Max (Fraser Anderson), who is himself enjoying having his girlfriend out for the count.

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Imagine attending a funeral where nobody even pretends to have liked the deceased, and you’re in the right tonal ballpark. If Audrey (played with incorrigible brattiness by Josephine Blazier) were able to observe them from her unconscious state, her mouth would surely be agape, eyes blazing, fists curled.

The idea of reality mutating into a bizarro personal hellhole for a person potentially at death’s door reminded me of the great and extraordinarily peculiar Australian classic Bliss , starring Barry Otto as a pathetic adman who has a heart attack then watches the world around him become nightmarish – his wife having sex in public, his children engaging in incest. Is it a personalised purgatory or hell on Earth?

One could make a compelling argument that Bailey’s film is visualising a nightmare unfolding in Audrey’s unconscious mind. At its roots is a genuinely uncomfortable idea, a real taboo rarely explored in art: that a parent, or parents, might genuinely not like their child and believe life is better without them.

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The abrasive style of US film-maker Todd Solondz might have been an inspiration; his oeuvre includes Happiness, perhaps the most shocking black comedy of the 1990s. But Bailey (a TV director making her feature debut) and Sanz are fonder of their characters, which flows through to the audience: we tend to want the best for them, despite their wicked ways. This is most evident in Van Beek’s performance, which is infused with an odd, bug-eyed and desperate energy that remains somehow relatable. All the cast are strong; not everybody performs on the same frequency, but they all clearly appreciate the script’s acerbic humour and find different ways to project that.

The very form of the film is in on the joke: Bailey deploys comedy from multiple firing points, for instance via editing rhythms (it was cut by Katrina Barker) and visual compositions (it was shot by Simon Ozolins). It takes audacity to direct a film as unhinged and fiendish as this; some would have wimped out and sanitised the vision. A moral ending would have absolutely ruined it; don’t go in expecting wrongs to be righted.

• Audrey is screening at Melbourne international film festival , with a final screening on 23 August; a general Australian release has yet to be announced.