The Party’s Just Beginning review Karen Gillan’s dark days in the depths of grief – The Guardian

The actor Karen Gillan makes her writer-director debut with a downbeat, interesting-but-flawed drama set in her hometown of Inverness, and shot on a tiny budget the kind of money they probably spent on almond milk lattes making the Avengers blockbusters in which she played cyborg Nebula.

Her character here is familiar from countless millennial indie movies: a funny, smart twentysomething who cant pull her life together, boozing too much, sleeping with the wrong guys, waking up still wearing her mascara. But a gravitational downwards pull tugs at the film, though I wasnt convinced it has the emotional depth for the dark places Gillan wants to take it.

As well as writing and directing, she plays underachieving 24-year-old Liusaidh (pronounced Lucy), who lives with her parents and works behind the cheese and ham counter at the local supermarket. The film begins with a Trainspotting-ish drunken rant by Liusaidh about the shitness of Inverness; later she tells a guy that she drinks to make her job bearable. You cant really conjure up the energy to resent it through a hangover.

But Gillans film isnt really about disaffection or despair. Liusaidhs nihilism is driven by grief after the suicide of her best friend, Alistair (sensitively played by Matthew Beard).

In flashbacks, we watch Liusaidh with thoughtful, introverted Alistair, a gay man in a hopeless relationship with an evangelical Christian. Back to the present, all unprocessed guilt and anger, she gets pissed and shags randoms in pub toilets. Towards the end there is a scene of sexual violence that Gillan doesnt give enough space to explore, adding to the films undernourished, unfinished feel.

Elsewhere, theres some fun banter between Liusaidh and a friend (Rachel Jackson), and these scenes have a relaxed and unselfconscious truthfulness to them. I cant help thinking Gillans superpower as a writer and performer might actually be comedy. Still, always a compelling screen presence, shes now a film-maker to watch.

The Partys Just Beginning is released in the UK on 1 December.

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The Party's Just Beginning review Karen Gillan's dark days in the depths of grief - The Guardian