Fran thinks about dying, but not gruesomely. Her mental tableaux of death look as if they were staged by the artist Gregory Crewdson. Sometimes her body is draped dramatically over driftwood on a serene beach or posed in a foggy forest on a soft green bed of moss. She imagines standing alone in a nondescript finished office basement as a giant snake slithers by. She imagines death, essentially, as peace in the midst of ever-changing nature.
Her reality is less beautifully hued. By day, Fran (Daisy Ridley) dons drab business casual and works in the sort of space that makes the environs of “The Office” seem like a magical wonderland. A small group of people perform clerical tasks to keep the local port in their tiny Pacific Northwest town running smoothly, and spend most of their time on crushingly banal chatter. Why is this cruise ship docked in such a way that it blocks the views of the mountains? Where are the mugs?
By night, Fran’s life isn’t much more interesting, but at least she’s in control of it. She goes home, pours a glass of wine and takes a long, restorative sip, then reheats some kind of insipid patty and eats it with a side of cottage cheese. Sudoku, brush teeth, bed, repeat. It feels like she’s starring in her own one-woman play, one where all other people are background noise — her mother’s phone call goes to voice mail — and nobody is watching.
“Sometimes I Think About Dying,” directed by Rachel Lambert, comes by its theatricality naturally; it’s based, in part, on the play “Killers” by Kevin Armento. (The other credited writers are Stefanie Abel Horowitz and Katy Wright-Mead, the latter of whose credits include “Boardwalk Empire” and “The Knick.”) The play entwined the tale of a young woman who thinks about dying with a secondary story about a young woman obsessed with killing, and though I haven’t seen it, I assume that means its themes were very different. But onscreen, “Sometimes I Think About Dying” can do what it could never do as easily onstage: We float in and out of Fran’s mind, entering her mood, her lethargy, her fixations on the back of people’s heads or their mouths while they speak. We start to become a little bit Fran.
Perhaps the best term for Fran’s persistent mood is acedia, that feeling of not caring much about anything, especially one’s position in the world. (Ancient monks called it the “noonday demon.”) It’s often equated with depression, but there’s a particular torpor provoked by a soul-sucking office that can bring it on. Many a new college graduate has discovered, quickly, that a 9-to-5 job can become unbearable even if the work itself is simple, pleasant and well-paid. Something about the prospect of everlasting sameness can sap the will to live.
Fran’s co-workers seem to have compensated by developing cheesy chipper mannerisms in the office, or rich lives outside of them. It’s the latter that attracts Fran to Richard (Dave Merheje), the new guy, a self-declared movie obsessive who takes the place of beloved Carol (Marcia DeBonis) after she retires and heads out on a long-awaited cruise with her husband. Richard takes a liking to mousy Fran, who quietly declares in their team-building exercise that her favorite food is cottage cheese. He invites her to a movie that evening. She hates it. He loves it. And Fran, fascinated by this man who likes things, starts to imagine a different kind of life.
“Sometimes I Think About Dying” premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, where “Eileen” also made its debut, and there’s a striking similarity between the woman at each movie’s center. They’re both lonely and isolated while in the midst of people; they’re both frustrating to those around them; they’re both prone to imagining things that might scandalize others; and they’ve both found a measure of relief in a bottle. In other words, they’re both — dreaded terms — unlikable, a kind of woman that’s cropped up a lot in cinema lately, from the women of “May December” to Lydia Tár.
But distinctive from Eileen, Fran is very relatable. We don’t know why Fran is the way she is, or much of anything about her, but we know that she finds many things, in her words, “not interesting,” including herself. We get the sense that her isolation stems from assuming others would be bored by her if they actually knew anything about her. When Robert asks her what she likes to do, she says she cooks sometimes. “What do you like to cook?” he asks. “Different things,” she replies.
A movie like this one, reserved and a little mysterious, can be unnerving. Occasionally it feels as if “Sometimes I Think About Dying” is a bit too withholding, dragging down the story it has to tell. But there’s a lot here to like. It’s never entirely clear, until late in the film, what Fran is thinking, or whether she’s truly as blank a slate as she presents herself to be. Ridley’s performance is affectless and deadpan, until it isn’t. (There’s more than one reason I thought while watching the film of Aki Kaurismaki’s “Fallen Leaves.”) The moment of emotional revelation comes as a start.
But movies that leave you a little confused, leaning in and projecting yourself onto the characters, are often the best ones, and the cinema of drudgery can engage that impulse like few others. “Sometimes I Think About Dying” isn’t as masterful as “Jeanne Dielman” or “The Assistant,” but there’s a familiarity to the way it renders everyday life: as a cell, in which a woman has stripped herself of choice and possibility in order to survive.
At the end of the film, Fran encounters her former co-worker Carol, whose life has not gone as planned. “Every day I get up and I see the day out there and I get my coffee and I sit here and I think, all right. All right. This is what I have right now,” Carol tells Fran. “And no matter how much better whatever I imagine in my head is, it’s not as real as what I do have. So — it’s hard, isn’t it? Being a person?”
Fran watches her across the table and nods, something blooming in her mind. Carol, too, had her fantasies. So maybe thinking about dying — or anything — is how we escape a fallow existence. But maybe fresh life blooms only when you’re willing to get your hands dirty.
Sometimes I Think About Dying
Rated PG-13 for suicidal ideation, sort of, and mature themes. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters.
