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It’s easy to poke fun at the English upper classes, but that’s no reason not to do it. Amid continued social inequality in the U.K., the extreme wealth and societal remove of the aristocracy looks more absurd than ever
— and rarely more so than in “Lady,” a wildly silly and highly enjoyable portrait of one very posh woman quite literally fading into obsolescence. Very much putting the “mock” into mockumentary, as it follows both this batty dame and the young middle-class docmaker searching for a story in her mad web of delusions, the film (a recklessly freeform debut feature for writer-director Samuel Abrahams) is arguably something of a one-joke enterprise, but the joke is funny enough to carry it. Or would be, if its force-of-nature leading lady Sian Clifford weren’t already doing all the carrying.
It’s a lovely thing to see an actor who’s been a longtime team player finally get a vehicle that’s all about them, and seize the opportunity with both hands. Clifford won a BAFTA, and landed an Emmy nod, for quietly stealing scene after scene from Phoebe Waller-Bridge in “Fleabag,” playing the latter’s uptight, endlessly put-upon sister — a role that made a whole point of being the less vivacious, spotlight-seeking one, and may have sealed Clifford in people’s minds as a gifted wallflower. (Recent big-screen supporting roles as a dopey sadsack in “The Ballad of Wallis Island” and a featureless publicist in “Mother Mary” won’t have changed that.)
In “Lady,” however, Clifford is boundlessly, dementedly vivacious and spotlight-seeking: She throws herself into Lady Isabella Ravenhyde, an obscenely rich narcissist so ready for her closeup that even Norma Desmond might deem her a bit desperate, with the untethered, vanity-free commitment of an actor who knows she might never again get a part this ripe, this juicy, this big. Her performance is a whirlwind of fevered physical comedy, lip-smackingly tart line readings and rawly exposed nerves and neuroses that, slowly and sneakily, make you feel for her. The admittedly old-hat conceit of centering it in an ongoing doc-within-the-movie explicitly about the character’s hunger to be seen invites (and weathers) comparisons to Lisa Kudrow’s TV masterpiece “The Comeback.” Though they speak very different languages of privilege, Lady Isabella and Valerie Cherish would have a lot to talk about.
Who she doesn’t have much to say to, at least initially, is Sam (Laurie Kynaston), a young, soft-spoken filmmaker who (like Abrahams himself) can boast a short-film BAFTA nomination — though not the win, as he keeps reminding Lady Isabella, who keeps insisting otherwise. Clearly he hasn’t been flooded with offers since that accolade, so his agent has set him up with Lady Isabella, who claims to have a Netflix commission for a bio-doc about her life. That’s a lie, of course, and one of many she tells in the course of proceedings. But she’s convinced that if Sam and his crew just keep the camera on her as she swans about her country manor, copiously day-drinking and showing off her spectacularly garish wardrobe, the resulting content will be eminently watchable.
A very uncanny turn of events, best not given away, proves her unexpectedly right. But even if it didn’t, in a roundabout way, she’d have a point: She claims to be “aristocracy’s answer to the Kardashians,” and if that family got TV-famous on the strength of nothing more than money and an expensive lifestyle to show off, why not her? She’s certainly more eccentric than any Kardashian, and therefore more interesting, in ways she doesn’t fully realize — whether she’s shaking up a batch of tepid Bloody Marys, barking obtuse demands at her long-suffering maid Becky (Juliet Cowan) or, eventually, putting the moves on a most bemused Sam, the camera loves her. Or it loves Clifford, but either way, she has our attention. “Lady” effortlessly skewers the elite, certainly, but it also successfully targets a media landscape that has led elites like Lady Isabella to believe that they’re stars, practically by birthright.
Abrahams’ script, co-written with Miranda Campbell Bowling, is chockfull of elegantly pithy quips and neat throwaway gags, strung together by a pretty slender storyline that, even in Lady Isabella’s flighty world, doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why she’s so hung up on winning a low-rent regional talent contest is anybody’s guess, but if it gives Clifford a platform to do loopy modern dance in an oversized crow costume, who are we to argue? “Lady” is quick and nimble and made with some panache — Terri Higgins’ witty, instantly character-shaping costume design deserves a particular mention, as does Josh Mallalieu’s jagged, agitated editing, which sharply keeps the documentary pretense afloat. But it’s ultimately a fully possessed star vehicle, dominated by a performance that single-handedly answers the question of why we’re watching.
