.theguardian - 3 days ago

With supreme entitlement, Sian Clifford’s Lady Isabella shines as ‘aristocracy’s answer to the Kardashians’ in this barnstorming comedy Those of us pining for Sian Clifford since the end of Fleabag, in which she played Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s fierce sister, have been rewarded with an outrageous barnstormer in this bizarre mockumentary comedy, a feature debut for director Samuel Abrahams. Clifford plays haughty but troubled aristocrat Lady Isabella who welcomes a young film-maker into her gorgeous country estate (filmed at Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk) with calamitous results, and the film plays like a scuzzier, shroomier B-side to Saltburn. Maybe it’s a bit reliant on Clifford’s overwhelming firepower of performance, and we have to indulge the way it cheats strict mockumentary rules about how exactly the camera comes to be where it is at every moment. But there are laughs and unexpected tenderness in this very peculiar sentimental education.Laurie Kynaston plays Sam, a pushy, insecure young director who shows up at the stately home with his crew, excited at the prospect of shooting a candid documentary study, but disconcerted by the distrait behaviour and patrician mannerisms of the chatelaine, Lady Isabella. Describing herself as “aristocracy’s answer to the Kardashians”, she hosts and judges the annual talent show Stately Stars for local children. Yearning for her own artistic vocation to be respected, Lady Isabella now wishes to compete against the youngsters herself, with a vast, complex multimedia performance-installation piece which includes poetry, action painting and photographs of her apparently dead body around the grounds. Juliet Cowan is a put-upon housekeeper who is unsure whether to address her employer as “milady”. Continue reading...

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