Deany Bean is Dead is a 2020 black comedy about a down-on-her-luck woman who tries to win back her ex-boyfriend.
Deanna “Deany” Locke (Allison Marie Volk) is sort of in a rut. Her ex-fiancé Tom (Christopher Glenn Cannon), whom she still has a thing for, is now seeing the world and, as she finds out poking around his social media, recently engaged. It wrecks her. Deany also works in an unfulfilling job for Maxine Williams (Wendy Wilkins), a particularly ornery boss who treats Deana with an outward contempt. When Deana is fired when a lunch order goes sour, it proves a breaking point, triggering a homicidal act of fury. Whoops. Now with her boss dead and stuffed in the trunk, Deany’s got a serious problem – what to do with the body? But what if the body isn’t exactly dead?
Directed by Mikael Kreuzriegler and written by Volk, the quirky Deany Bean is Dead is decidedly a few steps left of the beaten path, a low-fi rom-com thriller wrapped around a devilishly dark comedy packaged like a quasi-Twilight Zone TV episode. It features a disembodied male voice (introduced as the host of a podcast on killers) running commentary over the story, presenting what happens to Deany like a kind of twisted audiobook, at times instructional on how to be a successful murderer and then what it feels like to be slighted in nearly corner of one’s life.
READ MORE: We talk with Allison Volk about ‘Deany Bean is Dead’
Most of the film takes place in Tom’s house on the night he has come back from South America with his new girl Angela (Sarah Siadat), and how a host of characters collide under awkward and then very awkward circumstances. Deany is on a quest to win back her man even at the expense of her dignity, but she’s not the only one with some history on the table. It’s led by Volk, who has a sort of built-in glumness about her that fits Deany rather snugly, she a woman scorned and a little unstable, caught up in one troublesome snag and then entangled in something worse. She just keeps stepping in traps.
For a small production with plenty of limitations, there’s a good deal of complexity wedged among the curiosities. Deany is clearly off her rocker, the screws loosened by a string of inner personal turmoils, leading to some odd moments that are less about authenticity than painting an increasingly screwball collection of encounters that have us bouncing room to room where the ensemble cast grows weirder and weirder.
However, this isn’t a zany, fast-paced slapstick comedy, but rather a purposeful study of a warped personality imploding as her world falls apart, steadily convinced the narrator is the voice in her head, leading her to deeper madness. And I’ll freely admit, that narrator is at first off-putting, but then eventually finds it place and timing, giving this a sliver of abstract-noirism, especially as the relationship between Deany and the voice converge in a clever way. It’s not exactly ambiguous, but it helps plenty in giving the message its impact.
More so, it leads us to question our loyalty in whether we deserve Deany as the hero of her own story, her tragedy weighted by her skewered vision of reality. We certainly feel for her and recognize the instability, yet the film still manages to wrangle our sympathies for her, perhaps because most of us have at one time – in and out of love – felt something close to where she finds herself, even if her fate might greatly differ from our own.
There’s a wonderful moment with a slice of chocolate cake, that I won’t spoil. It’s a fracturing image because it somewhat resets the tone, shifting the final act from its absurd roots to something much different. It’s a daring choice but it works mostly because how honest Deany Bean finally reveals herself to be. This might not have the polish of a studio romcom but is nonetheless charmingly kooky with a genuine heart beating under its fragile skin.