Away From Her film review

certificate_12A

AWAY FROM HER

Personal tragedy has a big part to play at this year's Oscars, but they do say that Hollywood loves a good disease movie. In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Mathieu Amalric plays an editor who suffers from 'locked-in' syndrome and can only communicate by blinking one eye, while in La Vie en Rose Marion Cotillard's Edith Piaf battles against alcoholism. Now, in a hugely lauded performance, veteran British actress Julie Christie plays a woman suffering from dementia.

Based on a short story by Alice Munro and directed by young Canadian actress Sarah Polley (here making her debut behind the camera) things get off to a stilted and unpromising start. Christie is Fiona, a retired lady who lives with her husband of 40 years, former professor Grant (Gordon Pinsent). They live in a gorgeous cottage by the side of a lake (when will set designers come up with something less cliched than this?) and have loquacious, pretentious conversations with their dinner party guests.

When Fiona starts behaving oddly - forgetting words, placing objects in the wrong place - she is diagnosed as suffering from early senility and it is decided that the best place for her is a local home specialising in such care. This first section appears rushed and sometimes unbelievable.

Nevertheless the film picks up considerably once Fiona is settled into her new regime. As Grant visits her more, she recognises him less. He is pained to see her strike up a close relationship with a fellow (male) patient, and the film's most moving sequences see him trying to come to terms with this.

Christie is hot favourite to pick up an Academy Award and while her performance is impressive it is matched by that of her husband in the film, Gordon Pinsent. It's his struggle to adapt that is the crux of the matter and it's beautifully played by the Canadian actor, helping to raise the final work above the ordinary and making it a film that lingers.

Paul Hurley