‘Adult Life Skills’: Jodie Whittaker’s Outstanding Performance Elevates The Otherwise Thinly-Plotted Film [Review]

A charming shell of a picture with not much substance at its center, “Adult Life Skills” makes a run at several interesting themes and tropes yet veers away from each before any contact is made. An arrested development recipe with dashes of grief processing thrown in for flavor, the cinematic stew doesn’t ever come together, largely owing to half-baked character and narrative work. And while a deft directorial touch and magnificent performances elevate the material, it’s all in the service of a story whose dots just don’t connect.

As the opening credits roll the audience is introduced to Anna (Jodie Whittaker), who is spending the last days of her 29^th year living in her mother Marion’s (Lorraine Ashbourne) garden shed and making funny lo-fi space videos. Anna seems to be in a perpetual state of teenage indolence, microwaving her clothes when they aren’t dry, always sleeping in too late, and utilizing a BMX as her primary conveyance. Anna’s mother and grandmother live in the adjacent house, and while the latter seems understanding of the living arrangement, Marion is anything but. Exhausted with her daughter’s rudderless existence, Marion tells Anna that she has until her 30^th birthday to move out and into a flat of her own.

As the story unfolds, it’s revealed that Anna lost her twin brother unexpectedly some time ago, leading to her refusal to let go of the person she was when he was alive lest their bond be lost forever. Mixed into this A-plot is another about a young neighbor boy whose mother is terminally ill, along with one about the budding relationship between Anna and the local real estate agent, Brendan (Brett Goldstein). Adding to all of this is Anna’s oldest and best friend, Fiona (Rachael Deering), who comes back around in the first act after a long sojourn in the east to celebrate Anna’s birthday and to help push her pal out of the proverbial nest.

The story introduces all of these people to draw Anna out of her shell and help her realize there’s more to life than holing up in a shed in an effort to stave off closure, yet none put in the work necessary to develop Anna or the story as a whole. “Adult Life Skills” is an adaptation of writer/director Rachael Tunnard’s short film “Emotional Fusebox”, and the stretch-marks between short and long-form storytelling show. What works as a 14-minute concept doesn’t always lend itself to a feature film, and while there is indeed potential with Anna’s set-up, the script doesn’t push for any real exploration of the issues at work here.

The person Anna was before her brother’s death is never established outside of a few quick glimpses from the homemade videos they produced together, which doesn’t present much of a difference from her present-day persona (she’s still wacky and making videos). Sure, Anna seems to be in something of a rut when “Adult Life Skills” starts, yet it’s difficult to understand what that means when the supposedly catalyzing event of the film happens off-screen and doesn’t offer any evidence of a change. Even Anna’s depression doesn’t connect with her brother’s death, per se, for while she may be that way now because of her twin’s untimely passing, might that condition have already been there, and is just now rooted in something “new?” The film doesn’t provide answers.

There’s a clumsy attempt to advance Anna’s story via her pairing with the depressed neighbor boy whose mother is in the hospital, a puzzling choice since it makes little sense for these two people to even be together (Why stick this poor kid with the depressed town outcast, of all people?). Their bonding feels forced and unearned and doesn’t connect the growth of either character with anything that came before, making any potential progression hard to gauge. The Fiona character offers the movie a great opportunity to ground Anna as a person by bringing up how she’s changed, yet this too is undercooked, and used for little more than comic relief.

“Adult Life Skills” does move well, however, and the dialogue crackles with a bouncy pop in its step that gives the whole film a comforting, familiar vibe. These are wonderful characters, and they speak and act with a natural, effortless air that might have developed interesting ideas about the ways people grieve, and what it means to grow into adulthood without a piece of one’s identity as personified in a lost sibling. Whittaker is marvelous as the damaged yet resilient Anna, as is Ashbourne as her exasperated mother, but there’s just not enough meat on the bone for them in “Adult Life Skills.”

Interesting, funny, yet thin where it matters most, Tunnard’s film is nevertheless a good indication of promising work ahead. These characters are fun to be with, and the ideas at play are indeed intriguing, and worth exploring: one just won’t find any resolution, here. Like Anna, one hopes that “Adult Life Skills” moves beyond its past to grow into something more mature and complete without losing any of its vitality. [C]