"THE PARTY'S JUST BEGINNING" // TRIBECA 2018 REVIEW
Karen Gillan is best known for her turn as one of The Doctor’s favorite companions in the "Whoniverse" and now is known for her exploits with the Guardians of the Galaxy, playing Nebula, one of the adopted children of Thanos. But for her Directorial debut THE PARTY’S JUST BEGINNING, she has jumped far away from the cosmic galaxies of her most well-known properties. Instead, she had written and directed a pitch-black comedy drama about a woman who drinks too much, who parties too much, and is tortured by the suicide of her best friend.
Liusaidh (Gillan) lives in a small Scottish town called Inverness. It’s a bleak town with not a lot to do and she has a dead-end job at the meat counter inside a grocery store to match. She spends her days being miserable and spends her nights getting black out drunk at a local pub or spends it in the arms (and beds) of various strangers, almost daring danger to rear its ugly head. She’s numb, broken, and hurting and Gillian’s performance is out of this world beautiful (pardon the expression). Throughout the film, she’s repeatedly haunted by memories of her friend Alistair (Matthew Beard), before it got bad and they were both happy together, and when it got really bad and she witnessed the worst thing a person can possibly see.
It’s all very heavy stuff, and the unraveling of why her friend eventually took his own life is powerful. The film also reels into a wonderfully dark and strange corner, where Liusaidh ends up having to confront other people’s depression while she deals with the nightmare of her own, and out of that she begins to slowly be able to face her demons. Gillan’s performance is fantastic, powerful, and incredibly bleak. Beard is heartbreaking in the flashback of her dearly departed friend, and in a smaller role, Lee Pace brings a full sense of charm and despair as a conquest of hers who ends up being a bit more. It’s a heavy night out at the theatre, but one that feels healing if you’ll let it in, even for just a couple of hours.
