Audrey (2025)

 

"John Waters-Style Comedy From Australia"

After its European premiere at the BFI LFF, director Natalie Bailey's pitch black Australian comedy is getting a digital release through Vertigo Releasing.

Many years ago Ronnie Lipsick (Jackie van Beek) won awards for her acting and even had 'a two episode arc on Neighbours'. But then marriage and kids intervened and now she's a miserable and frustrated housewife with two teenaged daughters - Audrey (Josephine Blazier) and Norah (Hannah Diviney) and a somewhat bizarre husband in the shape of Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor).

When the ghastly Audrey falls off the roof of the family home during a tantrum and ends up in a coma, it turns out to be the best thing that could have happened for the rest of the Lipsicks. Audrey's planned place in a prestigious drama class is taken by her mother posing as a teenager, wheelchair-bound Norah gets to have fencing lessons, while handyman Cormack is booked to fit cupboards at a local church hall but ends up getting involved in the pastor's sideline job of making porn for Christian couples, as well as having an affair with the pastor himself.

But then Audrey recovers and everything gets worse again. What's to be done? And might Ronnie being cast as Medea in a local amateur dramatics production give her ideas?

AUDREY is quirky and entertaining and, at times, in bad enough taste that the easily offended are quite likely to be upset. Calling it an Australian John Waters film might be going a little bit too far but the Lipsicks are certainly the kind of dysfunctional family who scream at each other a lot that Waters excelled at portraying, even if everything is a little more airbrushed than what the Pope of Trash used to give us. Here's the trailer, which will give you a good idea if this one's for you:

Natalie Bailey's AUDREY is out on digital platforms from Vertigo Releasing on Monday 17th March 2025