This article contains spoilers for Sometimes I Think About Dying.

Director Rachel Lambert’s sweet and sedate film Sometimes I Think About Dying frames suicidal thoughts as a strategy for survival.

In the film, introverted office worker Fran (Daisy Ridley) takes solace in increasingly elaborate, surreal and aesthetic fantasies of her own death, including hanging from a crane, lying dead in the woods and being attacked by a python. But she isn’t seemingly suicidal. Or even depressed.

She is isolated and lacking connection, but this seems to stem as much from choice as from social anxiety. Fran doesn’t want to conform to the social expectations she sees her colleagues awkwardly performing in order to fit in.

The film begins with the retirement of likeable colleague, Carol (Marcia DeBonis) and pivots with the arrival of her replacement, Robert (Dave Merheje), who has relocated following a divorce. Affable Robert uses gentle humour to fit in to the workplace, but the moment when he reaches out to Fran on the work message board shows that he also seeks a deeper connection.

Lambert understands the gendered nature of the pressures we feel and the strategies we adopt to fit in within social and work environments. Men are seemingly accepted more easily than women as being eccentric or laconic, as we see........

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