Fran (Daisy Ridley) wakes up every morning, commutes to the office where she sits at her desk, surrounded by chit-chat that she does not engage with, orders office supplies, and goes home to prepare to do it all over tomorrow.  The highlight of her day is when her mind begins to wander and she daydreams about dying, not in a sad way, but in a matter-of-fact way that lets her appreciate life more.  It is not until she meets Robert (Dave Merheje), the new guy at the office, that she begins to see there may be more to life than the monotonous march she has been on for most of her adult life. 

Rachel Lambert directs Sometimes I Think About Dying, an indie-minded drama penned by Stefanie Abel Horowitz and Katy Wright-Mead, adapting the play The Killers by Kevin Armento.  The 94-minute film debuted at the 2023 edition of the Sundance Film Festival where it was picked up for distribution by Oscilloscope.  The seemingly melancholic film is a lot brighter than it initially presents, and features a very metered performance from Ridley of a young woman burdened with the anxieties of modern life but refuses to be overdone by them.  It is a tender portrait of a depression that affects so many and seeks to build empathy with audiences instead of judgment. 

Lambert’s film is one that showcases a struggle using all the poetry that film allows, blending in the visual and the audial, though the filmmaking is not showy and feels quite ethereal and effortless.  For audiences, the combative title may be a struggle enough given it sounds like something that would have been saved in Charlie Kaufman’s drafts file, but as Dabney Morris’ harp-centric score plays out over the opening credits and montage, we nestle in and are reminded of the magic of a curtain opening ahead of a play.  What we will see will not shy away from the artifice, but it will seek to reveal something real; the first of many oxymorons about the film, each struggling to overtake its opposite. A deer standing on a stone staircase. The undergrowth overtaking a broken-down truck. This purposeful imagery puts us in an inquisitive state of mind so that when the camera catches Fran, alone on the beach before cutting to her getting out of bed to start her day, we are already a little distrustful in what we are seeing. At the office, another struggle between man and nature is commented on as the massive ships that can be seen from the window – by the people trapped in the monotony of their own making – are blocking the view of the mountains beyond. 

Despite the yadda yadda yadda dialogue which perfectly captures the sluggish droll of office small talk, the script does not totally fall into the cliche quirkiness one would expect. It bristles up against elements of those early-aughts, mumblecore films – especially in how Robert is written – but Lambert, by modernizing the heart of that cannon, presents something decidedly different in tone, yet almost equally empty. There is a contentedness to Fran that makes her an interesting character as she slowly tiptoes out of her isolation to form a friendship with Robert; a friendship that could possibly grow into something more. As she opens up to Robert, we as an audience also begin to learn more about Fran, and on the page, she presents a real challenge to Ridley who handles the sensitive character with grace and care, but it is not enough to really bring us in and invest in her. 

Though not a requirement to like our characters, it still feels rude to say that we do not like Fran simply because she does not open up to us. She is clearly going through some unresolved emotional turmoil, but Lambert does not allow her to ever experience a thundering catharsis, nor does she let us in on what happened to Fran. And that is fine in real life when sometimes we feel distressed without being able to point to a root cause, but in a film, we want and expect more causal analysis of our characters. Fran pushes us away just as she does the other characters in the film, but because of Lambert’s formal approach to the film, we still know we are supposed to be fostering empathy with her, yet we are never given a reason why. She is just as much a stranger to us in the beginning of the film as she is in the end and that is a frustrating arc to witness because there is no growth. She learns a lesson, but most of that pain of growth is experienced by the innocent Carol (Marcia DeBonis), a recently retired colleague of Fran’s whose vacancy was filled by Robert, through the loss of her husband. Life is short. Time is precious. Lucky for Fran, Robert accepts her apology quickly and without question. 

Sometimes I Think About Dying is a little too short and a little too sweet to really be a satisfying watch. It is fine at the moment, with Ridley the real highlight of the film in a muted performance stripped from CGI battles or large casts of legacy characters, but there just is not enough on the page for her to really resonate with us. In a way, the film is reminiscent of Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (2023) which charts another relationship between two characters who perceive themselves as unlovable while wanting nothing more than meaningful interaction, but Lambert insulates Fran and Robert from ever really experiencing the highs and lows that come with true connection. We watch them float through this storybook world, suspended almost in time, while Lambert clears the way for them so that when they come close to feeling something new, exciting, and profound, they are not overwhelmed by the experience. The result is a film that was purposefully made but feels aimless and rings hollow in audiences who know that life is not that simple.