“If I can’t communicate with people I love, what does that mean?” asks Jodie Whittaker in a new trailer for “Adult Life Skills.” The “Doctor Who” star isn’t sharing this concern with a friend, family member, or therapist. She’s talking to her thumb.
Rachel Tunnard’s feature directorial debut sees Whittaker playing Anna, a 29-year-old woman who spends her days making funny videos about characters played by her thumbs. Currently living in her mom’s garden shed, Anna is facing eviction: her mom wants her to find her own place before her 30th birthday.
Told she needs to lighten up by some and that she needs a man by others, Anna is starting to feel pressure to reevaluate her life and “grow up.” But before she can move forward, she’ll need to look back: Anna still seems unable to cope with the death of her twin brother.
“It’s a story about being lost and finding yourself, making peace with who you are and regaining self-confidence and dignity,” Tunnard told us. “I wrote it because I was working as a film editor and reading a lot of scripts and watching a lot of films, yet I wasn’t really finding many that felt authentic to me — ones that chimed with my friendships, my relationships, and my experience of the world. It felt like the emphasis in the industry on generating more ‘strong female stories’ meant that there were lots of scripts about women floating around, but none of the British ones felt true to me,” she explained.
Based on Tunnard’s 2014 short “Emotional Fusebox,” “Adult Life Skills” premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, where Tunnard won the Nora Ephron prize. She also won the 2016 British Independent Film Award for Best Debut Screenwriter.
Check out the trailer for “Adult Life Skills” to see Anna making an unlikely new friend and being appreciated for the weirdo she is by a potential love interest. Catch the film in theaters and on VOD beginning January 18.
