Audrey (2025), by Natalie Bailey
Did you know that the first feature film (longer than 60 minutes) was made in Australia? “The Story of the Kelly Gang” was shot in 1906 and was originally 70 minutes long — now only 17 minutes survive in various formats. Another question: how many Australian films do you remember watching? Probably not many, but thanks to streaming this can change. One interesting Australian film that recently hit the streaming services is the black comedy “Audrey”.
Ronnie Willis (Jackie van Beek) is a former actress and current acting coach who has a mug with the words “Best Mother in the World” — can you imagine what would happen if all women who posses one of those start thinking they really are the best matriarch on Earth? She has two teenage daughters: Norah (Hannah Diviney) who is in a wheelchair and Audrey (Josephine Blazier) who is a bitch. Audrey has been always trained to become an actress, taking classes since a young age… but she wants something else for her life. After an argument with her mother, she goes full clumsy with a suicide attempt and falls from the roof. Audrey is put in a coma. Since she had been accepted in an important acting masterclass, Ronnie does the only thing she thinks possible: to prove she isn’t a failure at acting, she enrolls and attends class as Audrey.
Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), Audrey’s father, in order to heal, starts lying. He tells in a church support group that his wife and daughter died and is instantly accepted by everyone. More than that: he participates, behind the cameras, in the making of a Biblical-inspired, nudity-filled movie and is quickly catapulted to the director’s chair… and to a new relationship.
Norah can finally start taking the fencing classes she always wanted. And thus Ronnie reaches the conclusion that it’s nice being just her, Cormack and Norah. Their lives only got better without Audrey.
Black comedies don’t get much darker than this one. With so many dark jokes, there is no room to develop some situations that are there to also cause laughs. For instance: Audrey’s boyfriend Max (Fraser Anderson) hits on Norah but later she’s accused by her sister’s friends on preying on such a vulnerable boy, in a “reverse rape”.
Having a disabled actress play Norah — who is on a wheelchair and has a light case of cerebral palsy — is a victory for all disabled people. In the past it was common the use of “cripface” — in an allusion to the also deplorable practice called “blackface” -, that is, able-bodied actors playing disabled characters. In some cases, there were even praise and recognition: in 1970, for instance, able-bodied actor John Mills won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for playing the disabled Michael in “Ryan’s Daughter”. “Audrey” is only Hannah Diviney’s second acting credit and we can say, also from her fabulous name, that she has the “it” to become a star.
The plot of Medea, the Ancient Greek tragedy, is more than a play Ronnie is the lead of. It’s a perfect mirror of our story. But overall “Audrey” is satire, and first-time feature director Natalie Bailey knows about that, after years working with Armando Iannucci in his hit TV shows such as “Avenue 5” and, of course, “Veep”.
Praised by commenters on IMDb as “an Australian classic in the making”, this movie is entertaining without shying away from being daring. Risks were taken — and the result showed that all choices were the right ones.
