Ab Film Review & The Last New Wave

In 2024, director Natalie Bailey and writer Lou Sanz unleashed Audrey onto audiences in Australia and America. Here's a film that I called a caustic comedy that rains like refreshing acid rain. Here's the story of a mum, Ronnie (played by Jackie van Beek), who opts to literally take over the life of her daughter Audrey (Josephine Blazier) when she ends up in a coma after an accident.This immaculately layered comedy film arrived in a time where Australian audiences are calling for more Aussie comedies, yet they're simply not paying attention to their existence, or if they do go and see them, they push off against them saying that they should be more like The Castle. As a writer and critic who predominantly covers Australian films, the notion of funnelling a creative voice into one style of genre storytelling is a frustrating and reductive one, and in turn, means that audiences are denying themselves the chance of engaging with some of the most inventive, exciting, and entertaining feature films that we've had