"There was this man who made a boat and kept sailing it and sailing it. Every time he sailed it, it got old and it keeps breaking. And he keeps getting a new bit every time it breaks. Then one day he realized there was nothing left of the old boat. It was only new bits. But he thought in his head if it were the same boat."
Writer-director Rachel Tunnard’s film adaptation of her 2014 BAFTA-nominated comedy/drama short Emotional Fusebox, Adult Life Skills (2016) features a pre-Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker and a pre-Ted Lasso Brett Goldstein.
In the eighteen months since her twin brother’s death, 29-year-old Anna (Whittaker) has largely shut herself off from the rest of the world; she has been living in her mother’s garden shed and mostly spending her time making short films in which her thumbs (with drawn-on smiley faces) are the actors. Anna’s 30th birthday is looming and her mother, Marion, demands that she move out before then. Anna staunchly refuses and instead immerses herself in keepsakes of her brother. She starts wearing his old sweater and constantly logs onto his website to rewatch funny films they made together.
Her self-imposed exile is interrupted when she’s forced to look after the seven-year-old boy next door, Clint, whose mother is in the end stages of cancer. As Marion tries all the harder to make Anna grow up and Clint imprints on Anna’s personality and way of handling grief, Anna herself is confronted with visions of her deceased twin and conflicting feelings toward her childhood friend Brendan (Goldstein).
Adult Life Skills premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the Nora Ephron Prize for Best Female Director. Tunnard also won the BIFA for Best Debut Screenwriter, and Goldstein won for Best Supporting Actor. (It should be noted that when Goldstein was unable to make it to the award ceremony, he sent Whittaker to accept the award on his behalf with an acceptance speech that he had written for her and the results are f*cking adorable!
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Tropes:
- Agitated Item Stomping: In a fit of rage during her argument with Fiona, Anna hurls her electric toothbrush at the door. It hits the floor and turns on, further angering Anna. No amount of stomping it, however, can shut it off.
- Angsty Surviving Twin: Anna is facing her thirtieth birthday without her brother, Billy. The depth of her grief is such that she has isolated herself in her mother's garden shed and largely avoids people, spending time instead going through Billy's old stuff and speaking to visions of him.
- Berserk Button: Having the shed broken into, her films stolen, and Billy's website taken down sends Anna into a tailspin. Ultimately she lashes out at Fiona and then at Clint, causing him to run away.
- Marion is triggered by the sight of Anna having pitched a tent in the garden and thrown her clothes on the ground. Fed up with what she sees as Anna's Excessive Mourning, Marion grabs the garden shears and slashes her way into the tent amid Anna's (and everyone's) protests.
- Broken Bird: Anna is this for much of the film.
- Cool Old Lady: Jean, Anna's grandmother. She lived in a commune at some point and has no problem openly discussing sex. She also keeps urging Marion to just let Anna alone to figure things out for herself. However, she seems to be just as aggravating a presence to Anna as Marion is.
- Cowboy: Clint is always attired in cowboy gear: hat, vest, sheriff badge. He even sleeps in his hat and won't take it off to put on a helmet so he can go boating. Jean makes him a leather pouch to hold, among other things, his toy gun. And then of course there's his name. When Anna first meets him, it's the hat she notices first because it reminds her of one she found among Billy's things; he tells her he's going to be a cowboy like his daddy, who works in construction demolitions. And when Clint settles into his own shed, Anna finds he's put up pictures of cowboys on their horses.
- Cry into Chest: Marion sobs in Jean's arms when Clint goes missing and Anna, who has gone to look for him, seems to have deserted the shed (possibly giving the impression that she has herself run off).
- Disappeared Dad: Played straight for Anna, whose father isn't mentioned at all and may have passed away. Subverted for Clint; his father isn't around for most of the film's events, but it's only because his job often keeps him away from home. At the end, he returns to take care of his son.
- The Gadfly: Fiona, but she's the good-natured sort. As much as she enjoys messing with Anna and Brendan, she genuinely is trying to get Anna to smile. Later, she works at setting Anna and Brendan up, though she also is constantly taking the piss out of them.
- Howl of Sorrow: Anna screams in despair when she finds Clint's boat in the stream but can't find him, then drops Billy's sweater in the water.
- Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Clint immediately imprints on Anna, much to her annoyance. He follows her around at work and then imitates her own methods for dealing with grief. Most notably, when his mum passes he shaves off a little of his hair and wraps it up to keep, having learned that Anna keeps a pot of her own hair she cut off after Billy died because she imagines her body sheds and changes so many cells over time, someday that hair will be all she has left of herself from the time immediately after she lost him. And toward the end, Anna discovers that Clint has taken over some other small shed and filled it with items and images that comfort him.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Although much of Marion's behavior is an inability to grasp that Anna handles grief differently than she does, Marion really is trying to get Anna to stop despairing and pull herself together.
- Fiona teases and even harasses Anna quite a bit. But she only wants her friend to be able to laugh and enjoy life again.
- Letting the Air out of the Band: Fiona finally manages to get Anna to go out clubbing, but as Anna dances to "Jesus Came to My Birthday Party," she begins to see visions of Billy in his scuba gear; the music slows and dies around her.
- Memorial Photo: There are photos of Billy on the wall of the shed, and one of Anna and Billy together on the kitchen wall. When Anna discovers Clint's own shed, she finds that among his cowboy pictures he has put up a photo of himself with his mum.
- Microwave Misuse: Running late for work, Anna discovers her bras still wet in the washer/dryer. She shoves them into the microwave to expedite the process, but the underwire in them begins sparking. When asked what happened to the microwave, Anna feigns ignorance.
- Milestone Birthday Angst: Anna has this, but not for the usual reason. She does not want to hit the milestone without Billy.
- Mistaken for Gay: In spite of Brendan's obvious interest in Anna, he falls victim to this. He asks whether it's because he has a high voice and wore pink shorts once. (He also apparently likes the Spice Girls.)
- My Beloved Smother: As much as Marion wants Anna to find her own place to live, she also acts in classic overprotective mother ways: trying to set Anna up with a skeevy hairdresser and later with Brendan, choosing apartments for Anna to look at, interrupting Anna's filmmaking via a baby monitor. At one point she even tries to give Anna's face a Spit Shine, to Anna's absolute disgust.
- Oop North: The film is set in Yorkshire, and Tunnard herself hails from that area, as does Whittaker. In fact, so does David Coverdale of Whitesnake!
- Parental Substitute: Anna is supposed to be this for Clint, but she winds up being more of a reluctant role model for him, and he winds up being more of a twin substitute for her.
- Parents Suck at Matchmaking: Marion invites her new hairdresser over with the hope of setting up Anna with him. Beyond Anna's aversion to socializing, he repels her with his creepy vibes—not to mention his dreadful haircut.
- Posthumous Character: Billy, who comes to Anna in visions where he's wearing scuba gear.
- Potty Emergency: Anna can't get into the washroom at work, so out of desperation she squats on the ground next to one of the boats. Unfortunately, Brendan turns up just then and obliviously holds a conversation with her from the other side of the boat.
- Shrunk in the Wash: Billy's sweater suffers this fate. Marion accordingly gives it to Clint.
- Show Within a Show: The film's plot and themes are paralleled in the thumb movies. The thumbs are astronauts who've been in space for 567 days, which is how long Billy has been gone; they're going to hit the sun in a few days' time (on Anna and Billy's thirtieth birthday), causing much stress for one of the thumbs. Even the film's soundtrack is referenced:Thumb #2: You need to lighten up. You need to stop listening to depressing hippie music.note Start listening to Whitesnake.Thumb #1: What?Thumb #2 (singing): Here I go again on my ownnnn!note
- Talking to the Dead: Anna has several conversations with Billy, whom she pictures wearing snorkeling gear. Her films involving her thumbs may also be a substitute for this, since one thumb is usually trying to reassure the other's existential fears in much the same way Billy counsels Anna.
- Title Drop: Brendan suggests to Anna that they should give out merit badges for learning adult life skills, such as "changing a car tire, sewing, sending something back at a restaurant, knitting." At the end, he presents Anna with a homemade version of such a badge.
- Unkempt Beauty: Anna doesn't seem to bathe very often, doesn't much care what she wears and sports Messy Hair, but she is played by Jodie Whittaker, so...
- Wham Line: "What's happening to your mum will fuck up your life and you'll never be happy again!"
- "I want you to blow up my shed."
- Womanchild: Anna. She lives in her mum's shed and takes little responsibility in her life, though this is her way of coping with her grief.
