Parents' Guide to Sometimes I Think About Dying

Despite its deceptively gloomy title, this lovely, small wisp of a movie explores themes of loneliness, trust, and perhaps even fate with a beguilingly quiet sense of poetry and mystery. Based loosely on a play by Kevin Armento—which was previously the basis for a short film by Armento and screenwriters Stefanie Abel Horowitz and Katy Wright-Mead—Sometimes I Think About Dying has the intimacy and perceptiveness of a fine short story. It's keenly aware of the banality of office talk, but it also finds poetry in its nothingness.

Director Rachel Lambert beautifully incorporates the gray small-town atmosphere into the story and themes (the movie's very first image is a fallen piece of fruit rolling to join its fellows in the gutter). And Fran is a cipher. She barely speaks, and there's no explanation for her fantasies of death and her reticence to be around others. Yet Ridley plays her sincerely, with a truthful emotional center, so that whatever pain she feels is genuine. (She's not a "quirky indie movie" character.) Robert is a perfect foil for her. Their connection may not be totally romantic or perfect—they're pretty much opposites—but it is a connection. Best of all is that Fran's awakening—which is more like a small, kind gesture—has little to do with Robert. Rather, it involves her seeing another character as a human being for the first time. Sometimes I Think About Dying understands that loneliness may or may not be solved by romance and that another possible solution may be trying to open our eyes to the world around us.