SXSW Film Reviews

Audrey the Trainwreck

Audrey the Trainwreck couldn't be more casual if it came swathed in a pair of sweats. Inscrutable title aside, it's more concerned with the way regular people – stoic or defeated, take your pick – get up and go to work and go on blind dates and have a couple of beers and go back to bed. Case in point: Ron (Baker) works in some vaguely defined customer service capacity, and Stacy (Wasser) drives a delivery van; they meet online and have several dates over the course of the film. And that's pretty much it, at least plot-wise. Writer/director Ross is refreshingly honest in portraying how the earth doesn't move when we meet someone new. One wishes Audrey had more forward thrust (the original score by John Medeski makes the film seem punchier than it really is), but the ambling pace does make certain observations all the more acute. Ross rather cannily begins and ends his film on very high notes – in shocking moments of violence that are funny but also true to the casual way life's tiny calamaties tend to come about.