Socially awkward Sybil (Rebecca Calder) has just found a new job at Mr. Thomas' (James Fleet) funeral home after the old one she has worked at had to shut down, and before long she proves herself an irreplaceable assistance to her boss, a grieving widower. Maybe it has to do with her somewhat macabre personality, which leads to her making frequent visits to the Roman Funeral Museum - where she soon enough falls in love with the owner, Mark (Jay Taylor), and the mere fact that he notices her emboldens her to follow him around and "bump" into him every now and again - and in her dreamworld he's her lover ... that is, until she runs into Tina (Robyn Rainsford), his fiancée she's had no idea about, and her heart breaks into a thousand pieces ... without Mark even knowing about it. And then he dies in a motorbike accident - one that she might or not be somewhat responsible for -, and his body is delivered to Mr. Thomas' funeral home. And fortunately, her boss is away for a few day and has given her free reign, so she has quite a bit of fun with the body she herself has perfectly restored. And then Tina comes and wants to see her fiancé, and that sets some murderous mechanics in motion ...

Interestingly, Sybil formerly worked for the funeral home Emma's dead son had disappeared from, which was the reason for it to be forced to close down. And given the actual culprit for the corpse-snatching was never found and Sybil's predilection for the dead, it's only a matter of time before Sybil and Emma cross paths ...

Now in its deliberately slow pace, its predilection for keeping things in the dark and revealing only bits and pieces instead of presenting the audience with the full picture right away, and its macabre story and style, Broken Bird might not be for everybody in regards to general audiences - but that doesn't mean it can't still be an absolutely awesome movie: It's directed in a very stylish, almost stylized manner, but that serves the story actually rather nicely, a story that doesn't shy away from the absurd, the surreal and even the grotesque, but that makes perfect sense in the end, and the cast really embodies their characters to the t to make this one rather satisfying if definitely macabre cinematic trip.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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