I love this kind of film. It’s like a black and bleak Hunt for the Wilderpeople but where parenting isn’t a grizzled old man getting a second chance. With sex toys.

The titular Audrey (Josephine Blazier) is the entitled daughter of has been (but not in her mind) TV actor Ronnie Willis (a magnificent Jackie van Beek). She won a silver Logie and had a ‘two episode story arc’ in Neighbours. Her husband Cormac (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor) is struggling to feel joy in life and their younger daughter Norah (hannah Diviney) is resentful that Audrey gets all the attention. 

Audrey is the centre because Ronnie imagines her being a successful actor , a Ronnie 2.0, and also because she’s the kind of person who makes everything about herself. Even Norah’s cerebral palsy takes a back seat to Audrey’s half baked dreams. 

It’s black comedy and so there are plenty of lines crossed and awful situations mined for laughs, from bisexuality and open marriages to exploiting disability and suicide. It’s done with a deft touch though and works because all of the characters are fascinating, complex and even likeable in their awfulness. Even Audrey, and even Ronnie, who in other hands could have been a two dimensional caricature is made by van Beek into a character we want to see succeed. 

It’s great to see disability put in the centre of a story without it being seen as a fundamental problem or treated with sentimentality. Diviney hits all the right notes as the pissed off younger sister who needs to thrive. 

This will be a film I watch again, particularly as I missed some of the witty repartee due to the volume of the audience’s laughter.