Lady Isabella (Sian Clifford), a lonely aristocrat with too much time and money on her hands, convinces a struggling director (Laurie Kynaston) to capture her every move. But her desire to be in the spotlight proves disastrous.
After portraying the neurotic sister in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, Sian Clifford serves up another dynamic performance on a silver platter as haughty aristocrat Lady Isabella in Samuel Abrahams’ spirited debut feature. The mockumentary comedy follows Isabella, an eccentric 40-something woman living alone at the sprawling Ravenhyde Hall estate, who has tricked inquisitive director Sam (Laurie Kynaston) — no doubt loosely based on Abrahams — into believing that her marooned existence is worthy of documentation as she’s “aristocracy’s answer to the Kardashians”.
Shot like a low-budget fly-on-the-wall documentary, Lady’s intriguing blend of mockumentary and surrealism matches the bizarrely engaging chemistry between Kynaston and Clifford, as a young director, vying for a candid study, clashes with a woman desperate to control her narrative. Clifford is particularly potent as Isabella, who in impassioned moments of pseudo-performance art (declaring that she’s the canvas, the paint and the brush) decides to compete in the annual talent show Stately Stars, which she hosts and judges for local children. As Abrahams’ sharp script, co-written with Miranda Campbell Bowling, reveals the reality of Isabella’s life, including dealing with menopause and struggling with grief, she begins to fade away, disappearing figuratively and literally in her gilded cage.
Jonny Woodley’s intensely haunting, vocally operatic score and Terri Higgins’ costume design (from a bright-azure tartan pantsuit to leopard print layered with a trench coat) add a psychedelic touch. While there are moments where the mockumentary format hiccups with the camera’s questionable positioning, and Clifford’s raucous performance tips into frenzied territory, Abrahams is quick to get the film back on track with moments of deep vulnerability. With shades of Saltburn’s opulent aesthetic and Grey Gardens’ ruminative loneliness, Lady embodies unexpectedly poignant ponderings on the invisibility of middle-aged women and the relationship between artist and muse.
Sian Clifford is on top form in Samuel Abrahams’ debut, an engrossing study of invisible womanhood that plays out with bizarre hilarity and emotional sensitivity.
