A young woman believes she kills everyone she loves.
EVERYBODY DIES SOMETIMES is used with permission from Charlotte Hamblin. Learn more at / charlotteehamblin .
Mara is a young woman who has been a little stunted in life, mostly because she suffers from crippling anxiety: she believes that she somehow kills anyone who gets close to her. Not through homicide, of course. But by knowing her, her loved ones suffer premature deaths, or so she believes.
As a result, Mara is lonely and awkward, with no friends and no lasting relationships. But when she becomes pregnant, she must confront her anxieties about death before starting the most important relationship of her life.
Directed and written by Charlotte Hamblin, this short drama accomplishes a tricky balancing act with aplomb: though it's a story that examines our fears and attitudes about death and how we live with them, it also achieves a slightly absurdist tone full of mischievous wit and humor.
The storytelling accomplishes this through a sharp, droll eye in the visual design of the film, with its slightly mannered images, spots of bright color and an appealing sense of light, as well as rich, textured writing that honors both Mara's emotional dilemma and finds humor in the inability of the world around her to assuage her anxieties.
The film opens with Mara meeting with a therapist for the first time, telling him frankly that by the time their session ends and she tells him personal details, he will be dead soon. Then she relays all the deaths she experienced as a child, beginning with her mother dying while giving birth to Mara.
The structure of the therapy session not only offers a short-cut to the character's most intimate thoughts, but it's also a showcase for lead actor Tanya Reynolds's marvelous performance, which hits the notes of dry humor but also the vulnerability and fear that she experiences facing a big change in her life. Some of her reactions to the imminent arrival of a child could be framed as extreme or shocking, but considering the lifelong fear she's been living under, what's speaking is that anxiety at the possibility of losing someone else, someone whose loss would be catastrophic.
But when the counselor sensibly asks what Mara wants, her answer is telling and sincere -- and segues the rest of the film towards a tenderhearted, profound conclusion about how we can live fully, even with the fact of mortality shaping any human's existence. It makes EVERYBODY DIES SOMETIMES a truly moving watch, one with wry, dark humor, philosophical resonance and emotional courage.