Should beautiful actors be allowed to play those with plain faces?

Sometimes I Think About Dying is one of those titles you want to shout back at – what? Only sometimes? It is co-produced by, and stars, Daisy Ridley from the Star Wars franchise who, in going from a blockbuster to an interesting independent film, is taking the opposite of the usual career trajectory. Perhaps you can only fight the Dark Lords of the Sith for so long? But it has paid off, as this is an understated little gem.

It is directed by Rachel Lambert and written by Stefanie Abel Horowitz, Katy Wright-Mead and Kevin Armento. It’s hard to say what it is exactly. A dour, deadpan romantic comedy probably gets nearest. Ridley stars as the thirtysomething Fran. Fran works in a small office in a small coastal town in Oregon and she is drab. Drab hair, drab clothes, often brown, which is always a bad sign, I don’t know why. (I like brown, personally.) It made me think. Now that we are super-sensitive about which actors play which roles – and that black-face and gay-face and Jew-face and so on are verboten – what about plain-face? When beautiful women pretend they are not. Are non-beautiful actors ever asked to play beautiful parts just to make it fair? The thought just occurred to me, that’s all. (But while we’re on the subject…Charlize Theron should probably be awarded a lifetime achievement in plain-face. See: Monster, Tully.)

Back to Fran, who lives a solitary life, avoids eye contact, rarely says a word, thinks agonisingly hard about what to write in someone’s retirement card before she comes up with: ‘Happy retirement. Fran.’ She keeps to her little office cubicle – she does something involving spreadsheets – as her co-workers chat and life happens around her. Then a new employee arrives: Robert (Dave Merheje). Their boss – a David Brent character – gathers them round the table and asks them to introduce themselves and their favourite foods: ‘I am Gary.