Ben­jamin

“We’re all going to die, we’re all going to die,” soothes Tes­sa (Anna Chan­cel­lor) to Ben­jamin (Col­in Mor­gan), the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter in the debut fea­ture from writer and come­di­an Simon Amstell.

Based on Amstell’s own angst-rid­den years in the pub­lic eye, Ben­jamin is a direc­tor suf­fer­ing his own brand of Sec­ond Album Syn­drome ahead of the pre­mière of his new film, No Self, hav­ing received great acclaim for his first fea­ture years pri­or. At least, as his producer’s prac­ti­cal and despon­dent mantra sug­gests, in the event of total cat­a­stro­phe, one day no one will remem­ber him or his work.

Ben­jamin is a film com­prised of qui­et and ten­der moments bal­anced by Amstell’s blend of comedic tragedy and self-dep­re­ca­tion. Joel Fry’s char­ac­ter, Stephen, as Benjamin’s clos­est friend, is cen­tral to some par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ing moments. He shares Benjamin’s afflic­tion of trou­bled self-expres­sion with his own career woes as an ail­ing stand-up com­ic, and when he does man­age to be vocal about his prob­lems they are masked by his dry humour and flippancy.

The two men bab­ble their way through social anx­i­ety with exces­sive dia­logue that at once seems to reveal every­thing and noth­ing about them, keep­ing them both at arm’s length from the affec­tion they crave. Even in their gloom, Fry and Mor­gan make a charm­ing pair while French actor Phénix Brossard, as Benjamin’s love inter­est Noah, brings an added sweet­ness to the film’s roman­tic subplot.

Benjamin’s work, like Amstell’s, is naked­ly con­fes­sion­al but luck­i­ly the director’s film suc­ceeds where his character’s does not. Ben­jamin is a lay­ered exer­cise in tor­tur­ous yet cathar­tic self-reflec­tion, and an earnest exposé on Amstell’s own career anx­i­eties and trou­bled rela­tion­ships bot­tled away into heart­en­ing fiction.