Got a hold of Sometimes I Think About Dying with Daisy Ridley. I'm glad there has been some life for her after the whole Star Wars debacle (which was never her fault). She really got her big break in TFA and learned on the job, I remember from interviews -- it was a grueling push on her to improve her acting -- and she delivers here. This is a hard performance to pull off. It's possible if she were ten years further into her career, she might have done better -- but I think primarily she delivered what the director was asking for and it was the director's (and/or script's) job to better smooth out the performance.
This is one of those rare parts where I felt some similarity to a character. I feel like Fran needs more structure than I do, but the overall brush strokes of her character I could really relate to. It's like the only place she can feel safe and certain is in her own environment, by herself, and she creates that bubble around herself by silence around her coworkers. She might have a bit of disdain for them and sometimes views their workplace chatter as banal -- but at the same time she longs to be accepted as part of the group and to fit in. She just feels uninteresting as a person (mostly because she inhibits her interactions and has nothing to share of time with others, and there are suggestions she grew up in an area without much communication or human contact) and also like she is inadequate to know what others want from her or what the expectations are so that she can comfortably meet them. Others around her seem to be very at ease in navigating human interaction. It's just that it also seems kind of messy and incomprehensible, and other people have more volatile and unpredictable mood changes to her. Fran desperately clings to stability, but this makes her unchanging and somewhat lifeless.
So she ends up having these compulsive thoughts about what it would feel like to be dead. Not dying, not killing herself per se, but what it would just feel like to be a corpse. Imagining herself in different settings as a dead person. it's a weird psychological place to be. It's like how the isolated mind processes that state of feeling numb, not even being sure what one likes or dislikes because they've never needed to recognize or articulate it, and just not knowing how to fit in.
The film is more about Fran's growing self-awareness and learning things about herself, as well as the catalyst brought by a new coworker. It's clear she has the capability and there are things about her she hasn't even recognized herself, but it needs other people to be drawn out.
I could put myself in Fran's shoes a lot, in terms of her experience and just feeling so clueless at times it leaves one without the ability to even engage even when she wants to. It's not wrong that she finds it easier at first to talk through IM, and there are little hints of sardonic wit slipping through via her minimalistic literalness. She also drifts immediately to Robert, who can engage and be more open but also seems very appreciative of her flaws and views them sometimes as strengths -- and who makes subtle jokes that others might not appreciate but she finds interesting.
