Lady      Director: Samuel AbrahamsCert: 15AStarring: Sian Clifford, Laurie Kynaston, Juliet Cowan, Olisa OdeleRunning Time: 1 hr 35 minsThe first 20 minutes or so of this interesting British mockumentary looks to be taking potshots at the largest barn doors with the fattest blunderbusses. Laurie Kynaston, in round glasses and woolly hat, plays Sam, a stereotypical indie film-maker. Sian Clifford, plum in mouth throughout, goofs off as a stereotypical pampered aristo. This Lady Isabella, subject of Sam’s doc, is quite a few rungs up the social ladder from the anti-heroine of Amandaland, but her egotistical delusions are in the same school as those explored in that sitcom. Her ladyship has absurd ambitions for her appalling avant-garde art projects. She wrongly believes everyone adores her. She even has a version of Amanda’s Anne in a harassed factotum (Juliet Cowan) who isn’t quite sure if her boss is “ma’am” or “Isabella”.Just as the audience is settling into the predictable rhythms, however, the movie takes an unexpected swerve towards Buñuelian absurdity. Sam has (rightly) become suspicious of Isabella’s claim that Netflix is interested in her story, but the new developments greatly enhance the project’s viability. They also help to humanise and soften a character who has, hitherto, been pitched at the level of sacred monster.Audiences are asked to allow some licence as regards the mechanics of the supposed documentary. There are many scenes where surely no cameraperson would have been present. If you can find a film in this genre for which that is not the case then award yourself a medallion.More troubling is the uncompromising broadness of the core satire. Clifford, best known for playing Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s fearsome sister in Fleabag, does not hold back in the grandness of her gestures or the depths of her vocal plunge. For all that, she injects enough humanity to justify Sam’s eventual warming to his subject. As the walls close in upon her, we are all invited to indulge in a bit of Stockholm syndrome.Samuel Abrahams (who shares a forename and a Bafta nomination with the fictional director) has, for all his film’s flaws, fashioned a definitive hunk of oddball that bears qualified comparison with earlier assaults on the eccentric gentry such as Viv Stanshall’s Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.Lady surely cannot fail to pick up some sort of cult following.In cinemas from August 14th