Dir: Samuel Abrahams, UK, 2025, 97m.
Lady is an off-kilter comedy about a lonely, narcissistic aristocrat who enlists a struggling, opportunistic filmmaker to document her every move. But as her hunger for attention intensifies, the spotlight takes a surreal turn: Lady begins to become invisible. Blending mockumentary with magical realism, Lady turns its gaze on our increasingly desperate need to be seen.
With its eccentric characters, deadpan absurdity and uneasy blend of comedy and body horror, Lady initially plays as a gleefully mean-spirited skewering of aristocratic pomposity. But Samuel Abrahams’ film gradually reveals a sharper target: the exploitative relationship between subject, filmmaker and media machine, with the appetite for content becoming as grotesque as the behaviour it captures.
Sian Clifford is brilliant as a ferocious, fearless aristo, throwing herself into Lady’s delusions of grandeur, fragile self-esteem and increasingly bizarre physical transformation. Clifford’s amusing performance is very much the film’s driving force — and your take on the satire may depend on how happily you surrender to its particular brand of eccentricity.
The film’s mockumentary conceit also gives Lady a slyly industry-facing edge. What begins as a portrait of one woman’s pathological need for attention becomes a satire of the filmmaking process itself: who gets to be seen, who gets exploited, and what happens when the camera keeps rolling after the human being has disappeared.
There are echoes of the peculiar, melancholic world of Grey Gardens, with a touch of Documentary Now!’s cheekily deadpan ‘Sandy Passage’. Yet beneath the absurdity is something darker and more affecting: a film about visibility, vanity and the strange human cost of turning a life into content. It may not always be conventionally funny, but its increasingly unsettling tone is precisely what gives Lady its bite.
A preview screening at The Garden Cinema London W1 on Thursday 13 August will be followed by a Q&A with Sian Clifford.