Clara’s Ghost
Clara Reynolds has lost her shoe, and if she ever had any shred of consideration for another human being, she has lost that too, swerving her car wildly across the road as she watches the verge for a sign of her missing footwear then stepping out and blocking traffic, oblivious to other drivers who are understandably impatient with her selfishness, trying to get the police to engage with the search who are unimpressed by either her or that her husband is an actor.
An upstairs room filled with trophies of the past, Emmy awards and a set of VHS copies of Sweet Sisters starring Julie and Riley, they are coming home for a family photoshoot and the celebration of their dog Ollie’s birthday, Julie only nine weeks away from her wedding and feeling that the planning is not as advanced as it should be, and father Ted dismayed having been fired by Julie’s fiancé after an argument where he belittled the director.
A family affair, written and directed by Bridey Elliott who also appears as Riley, Clara’s Ghost stars her sister Abby Elliott as Julie with her parents Chris Elliott and Paula Niedert Elliott as Ted and the titular Clara, a woman who is so persistently drunk that it is little surprise that she sees spirits, haunted by the spectre of Adelia, daughter of Captain Chadwick who built the house in 1862, killing himself in the forest when his child went mad, presumably aware that this was to be her fate.
The unseen Captain Chadwick possibly the only approach to a sympathetic character, Adelia (Isidora Goreshter) fails to have any Jacob Marley-like effect on Clara, the wealthy Reynolds undeniably a family who deserve each other, shallow, selfish, self-obsessed, bitter, resentful of any hint of success experienced by the others and certainly above mingling with lesser people on public transport.
Inviting their drug dealer Joe (Hayley Joel Osmont) to stay for dinner the closest they come to associating with “normal” people, desperate to do anything to break them out of their dysfunctional dynamic of mutual loathing, then forcing him to participate in a séance which is another excuse to mock and taunt each other, while there have been other performers who have parodied themselves, presenting exaggerated versions of their public image, there is no sense that Clara’s Ghost has any self-awareness to raise it beyond pitiful embarrassing indulgence.
With no changes to the characters, no lessons learned, no significant events occurring, the lingering presence of Adelia largely meaningless with only Clara aware of her and she too set in her ways to pay any heed, her miserable spoiled children having learned their ways from their entitled, privileged hypocritical parents, Ted telling his wife to sober up even as he chugs another tumbler, Clara’s Ghost is nothing more than a stain which needs exorcising from the memory.
Clara’s Ghost will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 26th September
