SUNDANCE23 REVIEW: Sometimes I Think About Dying [2024]

Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 94 minutes
Release Date: January 26th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Oscilloscope
Director(s): Rachel Lambert
Writer(s): Kevin Armento, Stefanie Abel Horowitz & Katy Wright-Mead / Kevin Armento (play “Killers”)

It’s hard, isn’t it? Being a person?

There’s a beautiful serenity to the moments in Rachel Lambert’s film Sometimes I Think About Dying when lead character Fran (Daisy Ridley) does exactly that. Because anxiety and discomfort take over whenever she isn’t lost in those daydreams of stillness.

Whether the loudly hollow conversations of coworkers or the mundanely idle small talk foisted upon her shielded and quiet wallflower, Fran is caught in a no man’s land of curious terror that often leads to her silently excusing herself so as not to feel both out-of-place and like a distraction. Her presence as an “other” keeps her separate thematically while also ensuring that she believes she’s actually sticking out.

Adapted by Stefanie Abel Horowitz (who also directed a short version) and Katy Wright-Mead from Kevin Armento’s play “Killers” (I’m fascinated by how this staid and introspective work originated on-stage since so much of its potency lies in moments devoid of dialogue), the plot seeks to pull Fran out of her subconscious ruminations on life and death by introducing a potential love interest in Robert (Dave Merheje).

It’s a clandestine courtship begun on the inter-office chat app that quickly reveals itself to be a case of opposites attracting with his loquaciousness endearing and frustrating as easily as her shy introversion. He’s just moved to town and already has made friends with those serving him at the local diner and theater. Robert is everything Fran isn’t.

And yet he isn’t perfect. He, like everyone in their office, must still endure the machinations of humanity filling time and space with empty words. Lambert’s film is very deliberate with a glacial pacing that embodies this awkward atmosphere of phoniness to help us understand Fran’s isolation as well as the commonality of just how easy it is to lose years of your life to the grind of careers that promise to set you up for a prize of happiness that may never come.

That’s not to say the message is to connect with people you may not like just to survive. Parvesh Cheena’s Garrett is proof of the opposite—connecting superficially with coworkers to get through the daily artificiality and maintain true joy outside its capitalist convention.

It’s also why, while cutely endearing, the Fran and Robert dynamic is perhaps the least interesting piece of the whole. The dry humor of their insecurities is entertaining enough to endure the pacing, but it’s the supporting cast like Garrett and especially Marcia DeBonis’ Carol that truly resonates. They are the ones that provide Fran examples of what her life could be while also revealing how her terror in the unknown isn’t unique.

We all feel it. Some simply cope better thanks to a personality and/or past that helps them overcome the debilitating fear. Because connection isn’t a catch-all answer. Carol is proof of that (DeBonis is truly fantastic in a limited role). It supplies hope, though, and a promise that maybe life isn’t so scary after all.