Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023)

It might take an act of Congress just to get Fran to speak.  She is painfully shy, socially awkward and keeps to herself.  Her day is spent hiding behind her cubicle at work and at night eating cottage cheese before slipping into bed in room drenched in blazing lights from outside that make it look as if she’s bedding down in the middle of the day.  There don’t seem to be any outside markings of her life outside of that, no associations, no friends, not even any family connections.  There is a strange mental imagery that she creates in which she imagines herself dead.  She isn’t suicidal, this is just part of her weird thought pattern.

I didn’t clock it, but I think it is actually about 25 minutes into the movie before we hear Fran speak, only then is she forced to tell her co-workers in a round-table that she likes “Cottage Cheese.”  At work she is the supply clerk, hiding behind her computer and peeking over the wall of her cubicle to observe the activities of her co-workers.  Early on, she is obsessed with Carol, who is a few days away from retirement.

Fran’s odd world is occupied more by quirks in her personality than by any kind of depression, and despite the film’s glum title, Sometimes I Think About Dying is actually quite a sweet little dramedy about two lonely souls who take a stab at a common bond.  Fran is stuck in a cyclical rut and she likes it that way.  But that doesn’t mean that she’s outside of something new, partially when Carol’s job is now filled by a pudgy divorcee named Robert (Davd Merheje) who quietly asks her out.

What happens between them is based more on personalities then plot.  She is socially awkward by remaining inward, and he is socially awkward by having too many square interests.  They’re cute together.  Fran gives Robert a chance to focus on something other than divorce, and Robert gives Fran an opportunity to occupy her mind with something other than daydreams about death.

You can probably tell, this is not a magnanimous film, but rather the kind of movie that you cozy up with on a Sunday afternoon with a lovely performance at the center by Daisy Ridley, whose performance is largely made up of nicely chosen body language.  She doesn’t speak for a good portion of the film, and her words are carefully chosen.  When she does speak, it is in a quiet stumble as if she can’t remember how to form words.  It’s a tightly controlled performance, far from the more bombastic emotions of Star Wars.

Sometimes I Think About Dying never announces itself.  It’s a small, quirky and sometimes funny film about a tiny but very particular world and the quiet occupant in its center.