I Used to Be Funny

My favourite thing about Ally Pankiw’s film is its structure, and how it creates tension by telling the story through flashbacks. The structure is carried by an outstanding performance by Rachel Sennott (I would argue the best performance I’ve ever seen from her) – playing the before and after of a life-changing trauma that the film doesn’t reveal until the third quarter so devastatingly that the confirmation of how bad it really was, when it comes, only confirms what the viewers could already guess. The Sam Cowell before the caesura is open, caring, pro-active. She’s landed a job as an au-pair (an “adult nanny”) for a cop dad (Jason Jones) and his teenage daughter Brooke (a fantastic Olga Petsa) and proves from the start how deeply engaged she is in attempting to connect to the girl, who is going through her own trauma. On the side, Sam is a stand-up comedian, a profession that doesn’t just require her to be funny, but also to deflect mean-spirited attitudes towards her as a woman on the stage with humour. On stage, she talks fearlessly about the pitfalls of dating men and sex, a brand of humour that will, predictably, be turned against her later, when she’s mercilessly attacked by a defence lawyer adapting the well-known strategy of victim-blaming a rape survivor.

The Sam in the now is staggeringly different. She can barely leave the house or take care of herself. Her roommates (played by Caleb Hearon and Sabrina Jalees, brightening the dark bits of the film) love her and want to be supportive, but it’s hard for them to find a balance between supporting her self-protective instincts and still pushing her to resume her life. She is no longer a good friend, or a good roommate, a girlfriend, or someone who contributes to society (the scene of Sam’s breakdown over her shortcomings is heartbreaking), but none of this makes them any less supportive of her – the film’s portrayal of unrelenting unconditional friendship is one of the most hopeful things about I Used to Be Funny. She can’t go back on stage – we only find out later in the film that the jokes she made on stage were utilised against her in the trial, and she can no longer write jokes, because the violence perpetrated against her has destroyed her creativity or confidence in herself. Maybe part of why Sennott’s performance is so effective is because it is so surprising – I associate her acting with deriving humour from discomfort and awkwardness (why I’ve classed Shiva Baby as a horror film of sorts, creating the same kind of suspense you get from a slasher through bone-deep discomfort), but her performance as Sam is more genuine and restrained.

Pankiw works her way towards the night that changed everything with care: she shows the joy and care between Sam and Brooke, as Sam tries to draw Brooke out, help her, use her humour to find a meaningful connection. Brooke’s mother is ill and dies, and Brooke’s father is mostly absent, and doesn’t know how to deal with his daughter. Sam becomes more like a responsible older sister, and having her in Brooke’s life also means that she gains the support of Sam’s boyfriend and her two roommates. At the same time, the film shows Sam interacting with Brooke’s dad. He is a cop, he makes off-kilter jokes that initially read as awkwardness having to interact with a millennial woman tasked with looking after his child. He compliments her looks, he relies on her emotionally, he draws her into a weird conversation with his cop friends who also walk the line between inappropriateness and awkwardness in a way that Sam I used to from men (as a woman as a comedian both), but that becomes, in retrospect, a horrifying hint at what will happen later.

The film has a lot of moments that are difficult to grasp and interpret, that feel like they are on the edge of something. When Brooke disappears in the present time and her aunt (Dani Kind, with good reason a fan favourite in Wynonna Earp) asks Sam to help find her, the film feels like it could go a completely different way than it eventually does – I thought of the great Search Party’s first season for a second, before it became obvious that this was going somewhere else. This is before we know why Brooke hates Sam now (her friends keep haunting her on twitter). It becomes clearer that part of Sam’s struggle is Brooke herself, a feeling of responsibility and guilt. Pankiw works towards the totality of the night slowly, first showing us the immediate in a flashback that shows a horrified, panicked Sam getting Brooke out of the house under false pretences, and the later reveal that this happens after she is raped by Brooke’s dad – that her very first instinct is getting Brooke out of the house, protecting her, not leaving her behind – is the emotional centre of the film.

The fall-out is shown in all of its horrific detail – the quiet menacing presence of the dad’s friends in the force who are first on the scene, asking Sam if she’s sure about her statement, the hostile defence attorney, taking her comedy out of context as some kind of proof that she led him on, the reaction of another male comedian, who jokes that Sam is now free to make jokes about anything, even while she’s lost the ability to go on stage at all, and despairs over her empty notebook. Her decision to save Brooke a second time – to go back to the place of her trauma, to solve the mystery of the disappearance, to look after Brooke long after she’s still actually responsible for her as an Au-pair, because her decision to care about her is about human connection (Olga Petsa’s performance in the scene where she tells Sam that she ultimately doesn’t really blame her for the trial, but for leaving her after), not being paid for the work – closes the circle. At the end, Brooke is back on stage, reclaims her ability to be funny after the act of violence against her threatened to take her voice away.

2023, directed by Ally Pankiw, starring Rachel Sennott, Olga Petsa, Jason Jones, Sabrina Jalees, Caleb Hearon, Ennis Esmer, Dani Kind.