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Film Review: Typist Artist Pirate King

Carol Morley’s latest dalliance, Typist Artist Pirate King, premiered this weekend as part of the inaugural critic’s picks of Tallinn Black Night’s Film Festival. Morley’s record of stunning biopics and inquisitive storytelling had me hankering to see this film from the moment I first heard about it, so when we were invited over to Estonia to witness the international premiere, I grabbed my notebook, grabbed my passport, and, in the spirit of Morley’s enigmatic lead Audrey Amiss, I hit the road. 

‘Typist’ is a remarkably delicate film. It delivers an in-depth, artfully curated, look at the life of lost artist — or self-proclaimed Typist Artist Pirate King — Audrey Amiss, a Sunderland reared eccentric who’d stumbled through a series of arduous instances and carried a paper and paints all the way through. We meet Audrey (portrayed, with care, by the reliably incandescent Monica Dolan) later in her life. She lives in a hoarder’s flat overrun with all sorts of papers, documents, wrappers and trinkets that she uses in her, as she states, “biographical” art. 

These pictures and words are accumulated in such a way that they are the cacophony of every thought in one singular moment – once that moment has passed so, then, has the need for further thought. (You can’t help but find a similarity to Sinyavksky’s writing in ‘A Voice From The Chorus’ and the spontaneous chapters of life in exile – permanence does not capture the moment, only the spontaneous can). 

However, the fleeting nature of Audrey’s every day is rooted in her troubling obsession with an event in her past. Further by her clinical schizophrenia, her frazzled, single-minded preoccupation distracts from commitment in any sense. She lives alone, she’s mentally fragile, and the only consistency she affords herself (although with a fierce disagreement) is the care of the NHS worker who checks in monthly. Kelly Macdonald handles her role of this nurse, Sandra, with much of the nuance and skill we’ve come to find solace in her for. She’s a subtle spirit, pulled out by the effervescent chemistry with Dolan that make the pair an addictive, warming watch. 

So, as Audrey enlists Sandra to drive her, in a little yellow Nissan called ‘Sunshine, out of the dredges of her London entrapment to the shining potential of an art showcase in Sunderland, a numinous sense falls over you as you know you’re about to embark on this transformative trip with them. 

(Read our full review in Issue 67 – out this December) 

Image courtesy of Metro Films

Written by Beth Bennett