‘I think we should get badges for adult life skills…’
I wrote recently about Brett Goldstein’s excellent film podcast Films to be Buried With, and that in turn led me to Adult Life Skills, the film in which Goldstein stars alongside the inimitable Jodie Whittaker. While I have allowed a few episodes of Goldstein’s podcast to slip me by as my mind has been fully occupied by Sir Gareth Southgate and his brave band of merry men, I have still managed to get roughly three films a week in during the Euros. I’m an inspiration, I know…
Anna (Whittaker) is pushing 30 and living in her parents’ shed. Despite the fact that everyone tells her that she should grow up, she’d rather spend all of her time arguing with her sister and making home videos in which her thumbs are the main characters. Suffice to say, things have gone badly for Anna, which is probably why I took such a shine to her.
Adult Life Skills is a series of vignettes in which Anna is forced to confront her grief at the death of her twin brother (who she still has hallucinatory conversations with from time to time) and her own arrested development. Writer/director Rachel Tunnard treats her subject with care and grace, and in Whittaker’s hands, Anna moves away from being a cypher for grief and sadness into the realm of fully formed character. Goldstein himself is charming and likeable (as he so often is throughout both Films to be Buried With and Ted Lasso) and the supporting cast do a fine job too with Lorraine Ashbourne reliable ever as Anna’s long suffering mother Marion.
As with the work of Craig Roberts, Adult Life Skills is an understated film that is destined to remain a cult classic rather than a best seller but it fulfils that role in a way that is often touching and poignant and occasionally hilarious. Worth seeking out.