Jamie is a real mess. She’s in love with a loser who lives in his van, and she frequently gets arrested on disturbance charges when she’s drunk, which is often. At forty, she lives in her deceased grandmother’s cottage, a cute pink bungalow. As she wakes up on the street one morning, after another bender, a friendly police woman gives her a ride home. When she arrives at the cottage, she finds that she has been locked out by her mother, who says she will take ownership of the cottage via a note on the door.
Jamie is convinced she can reclaim the house if she can find the grandmother’s will. She makes arrangements with her doofus boyfriend to help her break in while Mom is golfing. Doofus bails on the job, but Jamie completes it, only to find an unfinished will with a note from the grandmother saying she needs Jamie’s help to finish it. Now she feels even worse because she had flaked on helping grandma, and now she will be paying the price.
Jamie asks a friend for help finding a place to stay, and the friend’s wife offers her a loft. The marriage is dysfunctional, with the wife berating the husband. When the husband comes over, he and Jamie have an ill-advised tryst. Complications grow, and we wonder if Jamie, shaped by her abusive childhood and poor choices, will ever stop self-destructing. The initially unlikable character slowly starts to change.
Susan Kent’s performance as Jamie is impressive. Kent is transformed physically for the role, but it’s her nuanced acting that earns our sympathy, even as Jamie’s choices continually repel us. The film compellingly portrays the cyclical nature of Jamie’s decisions, reminding us that people in such situations sometimes never break free.
Jenna MacMillan, making her feature debut after experience in shorts and production roles, capably balances plot, characters, and action in this film.