Cinema has an enduring fascination with troubled creatives. Films such as The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and Séraphine draw us into the overheated imaginations of their artist subjects; Alex Ross Perry’s jarring Her Smell probes the battle-scarred psyche of a drug-addled rock musician by placing us, uncomfortably, in her head. But Carol Morley’s fictionalised portrait of real-life outsider artist Audrey Amiss (Monica Dolan) takes a different approach. Rather than actively attempt to evoke the inside of Amiss’s mind, the film is more passive and observational. Like the artist’s hapless former psychiatric nurse Sandra Panza (an underpowered Kelly Macdonald), we follow dutifully in the trail of chaos left by Amiss’s quixotic interactions with the world, real and imagined.
It’s a humane and warm-hearted little road movie, which takes a generous and accepting stance on Amiss’s rather abrasive character traits. But it’s also slightly flat and disjointed as a piece of film-making, failing to reflect the untrammelled, eclectic creative output of its unpredictable subject.
A prolific artist and collector of ephemera (junk food boxes and lollipop sticks found particular favour), Amiss was unknown during her lifetime and spent considerable stints in psychiatric institutions. Morley discovered a cache of her art, writing and diaries in the archives of the Wellcome Institute after she was awarded a screenwriting fellowship by the organisation. In one of the film’s more successful devices, Amiss’s actual drawings are interspersed throughout the film, a playful dialogue between the real Amiss and the fictional one. But the energy of her frenetic drawing style is not matched by the storytelling. Spending time with Amiss is draining. The film, like everyone who comes into contact with her, seems utterly exhausted by the experience.
