My primary emotion regarding The Sympathy Card is a sort of delighted envy. This movie has a creative, potentially risky premise executed brilliantly. The screenplay for this film makes me feel inadequate. It’s a good film is what I’m trying to say.
Josie is an impossibly awkward lesbian who doesn’t understand flirting, dating or romance. Luckily for her, Emma thinks her awkwardness is cute and is happy to tell Josie how to act in romantic situations. Unfortunately, Emma has lung cancer and doesn’t have long to live. After getting married, Emma makes a surprising request of Josie. Emma wants Josie to use Emma’s death as a “sympathy card” to get laid. More than that, she wants Josie to meet other women while Emma is still alive to approve them and give the hopeless Josie guidance on how to date. This is difficult enough when Josie keeps failing spectacularly with women. It gets even worse when Josie starts seeing Siobhan. Like Emma, Siobhan is willing to look past Josie’s awkwardness and genuinely likes dating her.
Clearly, The Sympathy Card has a great premise. It’s not one I’ve seen before. Or at least, not like this. Ultimately, The Sympathy Card is a film about non-monogamous relationships. There’s some kink in here too. But all of those comes with the addition of one of the leads confronting their own mortality and what that means for them and their partner. There’s obviously risk in making a comedy about terminal illness. But with risk comes reward. The premise of this film feels fresh and the execution of it more than lives up to the potential of the story’s premise.
The Sympathy Card is a film you could learn a lot from if you want to write comedy. I certainly did. There’s a lot of really successful jokes and punchlines. Funny moments in this film are frequent. The premise is funny as well as the characters themselves. Josie isn’t a fully one-note protagonist. There’s depth and other traits beyond her awkwardness. But also, the way the film uses her complete lack of social skills for comedy is great. Every character in this film has a specific voice and sense of humour. Josie’s is exaggerated awkwardness. This pairs nicely with Emma’s more deadpan, often bleak sense of humour.
In addition to jokes, the film has heart. There are genuine emotional moments and stakes to all of this. There’s a desire to see these characters happy, despite the odds stacked against them. As much as Josie has her flaws, you root for her to succeed. And you root for Emma to find happiness too. It would be enough to show funny people largely failing at life in a comedy. The Sympathy Card goes further and has funny people you like going through comedic situations of failure. That adds stakes and also, makes everything funnier. Josie doesn’t feel like a cringe stranger, she feels like my good, cringe buddy who I want to see have one successful flirtatious interaction.
The only real downside to The Sympathy Card is that the ending feels pretty abrupt. I thought the film was entering its third act when the credits rolled. And that’s disappointing because I was really enjoying myself. This is a funny film with absolutely great dialogue to match its unique premise. I really recommend this one. It’s a great example of a comedy specifically made on a small budget that maximizes all of its good qualities and minimizes its limitations.
Overall rating: 7.1/10
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Non-monogamous messiness
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