NANCY, PLEASE (2012)

Nancy has something of Paul’s, and he will tear himself apart trying to get it back.

NANCY, PLEASE tells the story of Paul Brawley, a gifted PhD candidate at Yale University. Paul has just moved into an apartment with his pragmatic girlfriend, Jen, and is struggling to complete his dissertation before embarking on a career in academia. There’s just one snag: as Paul is unpacking his belongings, he discovers that something has been left behind. A seemingly inconsequential object, but one Paul feels is of great importance to his dissertation and, therefore, to his future: a battered, personally annotated hardcover copy of ‘Little Dorrit’ by Charles Dickens. He will have to retrieve it from his former roommate – the obstinate Nancy. As he becomes increasingly consumed with the retrieval of ‘Little Dorrit’, Paul’s relationship and career unravel.

As the film narrative charts the orchestration of a minor annoyance into an all-consuming obsession, the plan for the music was to be at one with the straining tethers of Paul’s life and to draw the audience into the ambience of an ever increasing anxiety and obsession that grows with Paul’s sense of self-entitlement.  Inspired by films such as After Hours, it was my aim to characterise the films mesh of associations, reactions and inactions with score.  Importantly, the music for Nancy Please had to have a quality of degeneration reflecting Paul’s submission to the perverse allure of victimhood.

“Arresting… subtly engrossing… smart, darkly funny.”
— Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

“An unsung gem… a twisted, mordant comedy…
Nancy, Please is a much more than promising debut feature.”
— Amy Taubin, Film Comment

“You can’t avert your eyes.”
— Stephen Holden, The New York Times