Category: Romance

The Fall Guy

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★The Fall Guy

Rated: M

Directed by: David Leitch

Written by: Drew Pearce

Based on the TV Series by: Glen A. Larson

Produced by: Guymon Casady, David Leitch, Kelly McCormick

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu, Winston Duke, Zara Michales, Ben Knight.

‘I’m just the stunt guy.’

Ryan Gosling as stunt man Colt Seavers to super star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) brings back the adorable to a tough guy role, ‘Did she say anything about me?’

Because after Colt breaks his back during a stunt on set, he disappears from his girlfriend, camera person, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt).

Colt changes his number.

He gets a job parking cars.

Then Colt gets called back to work by Tom’s agent Gail (Hannah Waddingham) directed by none other than his ex, Jody.

Gail tells him Jody wants him back.

Colt definitely wants her back.

He just doesn’t know how to say it.  He just does things like cry his eyes out to Taylor Swift and pulls the tie under Jody’s gardening hat snug under her chin.

Did I say adorable?

I was surprised about how much of this movie is a romance between these two: stunt man and camera person turned director.

And as advertised, The Fall Guy is also a stunt movie, based on the TV series from the 80s, filmed in Sydney Australia which is pretty cool, with so very many explosions and I have to say terrible humour.

Think a Post-it note with, ‘Sell cockatoo’ written on one side and on the other, ‘Buy koala.’

The Aussie references hit like a lead balloon.

And the not so subtle dual meaning of the movie storyline and romance was overcooked, as was the fast forward dialogue.  It felt like there was one speed and it was run around, talk fast at highly agitated levels and again, explosions.  It was too much.

Colt when tied up and trying to talk his way out even talks about movies made with ‘too much.’

But I have to say those hesitations and head flicks from Gosling added just the right amount of giggle because it was subtle.

And yes, the addition of a unicorn to illustrate Colt’s state of mind was clever and genuinely funny.

So, yes there’s a lot of fun here, but unlike the stunts, not all the humour landed.

 

Bones and All

Rated: MA15+Bones and All

Directed by: Luca Guadagnino

Screenplay by: David Kajganich

Based on: Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis

Produced by: Luca Guadagnino, Theresa Park, Marco Morabito, David Kajganich

Cinematography: Arseni Khachaturan

Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance, Chloë Sevigny, Michael Stuhlbarg, Madeleine Hall, David Gordon Green and André Holland.

‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

Bones and All is more drama than horror, where the focus is on the ordinary to make the monsters more believable.

Maren (Taylor Russell) is like any other teenager: she makes friends at school, plays piano, her dad (André Holland) sets a curfew.  He locks her in at night.

That’s the first clue that something’s not quite right.

Then at a girls-night-in, Maren tears the flesh from the finger of her new friend.  And it’s time to move on.  Again.

Maren is an eater.

She’s pretty good at being on her own.  When she goes in search of her mother (Chloë Sevigny), she finds out there’re other eaters out there.  And they can smell if there’s another one around.

That’s when she meets Sully (Mark Rylance).  With a matchstick in his mouth and a feather in his hat, he’s hard to miss.

Lee (Timothée Chalamet) is also an eater.  But he doesn’t eat human flesh in his y-fronts like Sully.  He dosses around, eats because he has to; and the rest of the time, he tries to be his normal self.

Lee’s the friend Maren never knew she could have.

They’re kinda sweet together.  In between the eating.

There’s a strange poetry to the filming of Bones and All (cinematographer, Arseni Khachaturan), with shots like a tableau to illustrate moments of Lee and Maren’s journey:  shots of blood, daisies in a glass jar, the empty rooms of a sanitised house, a beaded necklace left under a bed.

It’s quiet to make those moments poignant but also makes the journey slow and dry at times.

This is offset with the layering of Maren’s father, Frank’s voice on a cassette, telling her story; added together with flashbacks to nightmares as Maren and Lee struggle to be who they are, to be eaters.  To eat people to live or the only other alternatives, suicide or being locked up.

Maybe love will save them.

It’s a point of difference, director Luca Guadagnino (some of his previous films: A Bigger Splash (2015) – loved it, Call Me by Your Name (2017) – award winning, and Suspiria (2018) – which I also enjoyed) giving the film a tone of normality; making the story about love, about the journey, about the ordinary, about the monsters.

With all the different threads and strangely quiet tone, it just didn’t quite pull together for me.

All the story’s there, but the tone didn’t hit quite right.

I enjoyed hearing the tapes from Maren’s father talking about her backstory, her origin more than the drama of it.

The film was made to make the eaters more human with a love story and family drama.  They just happened to eat people – ‘how dare you make this harder.’

And we never find out why.

 

Bros

Rated: MA15+Bros

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller

Written by: Billy Eichner & Nicholas Stoller

Produced by: Judd Apatow p.g.a, Nicolas Stoller p.g.a and Josh Church p.g.a

Executive Produced by: Billy Eichner and Karl Frankenfield

Score: Marc Shaiman

Starring: Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, Guy Branum, Miss Lawrence, Ts Madison, Dot-Marie Jones, Jim Rash, Eve Lindley, Monica Raymund, Guillermo Díaz, Jai Rodriguez and Amanda Bearse.

‘Hey, what’s up?’

It’s a classic Grindr introduction.  And all that’s required to hook-up.

But it’s not a relationship.

Bobby (Billy Eichner) doesn’t want a relationship.  He’s independent, has his own Podcast and is an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.

Bobby’s been around, he knows what gays are like: ‘I support them, I don’t trust them.’

Then he meets the super-hot, ‘grown up boy scout’, Aaron (Luke Macfarlane).

He doesn’t want a relationship either.

‘I hear your boring.’

‘Cool.’

They’re getting to know each other.

Directed by Nicholas Stoller (think, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) and Get Him to the Greek (2010)), Bros has the usual romcom formula, including the classic romcom run.

In the Q&A post screening at the Melbourne Premiere, yep, I was there.  It was fun.  Nicolas explains the decision behind the making of the film, ‘That it be honest, have a happy ending, and be really funny.’

And Bros has all those things.

Worth noting here that the entire cast in Bros is LGBTQ+ – an achievement Eichner noted in the discussion and highlighted how it was difficult for actors to land a role with their sexual orientation stating most gay roles were played by straight actors.

So there’s a genuine focus on the LGBTQ+ community in the film.

The film’s one of the deeper explorations into a gay relationship that I’ve seen, not being gay but being in a gay relationship – or, pretending not to want the relationship, the insecurities.  Like it’s just the beginning to know who they’re supposed to be in a relationship.

It gets emotional, exploring topics I hadn’t really thought about before like injecting testosterone to look good and why are you complaining because you like me looking this way?

And there’s a fair bit of gay sex.  Not so graphic to be porn, but enough to see the enthusiasm.  And the feeling of lying on the warmth of another human’s chest.

I admit I didn’t get all the jokes or jargon.  But there were plenty of moments that provoked a good belly laugh, appealing to my dry sense of humour – like Aaron and Bobby having a serious conversation while a guy tries to park his rent-a-bike in the rack, right in between the couple.

The look on the face.  It just tickles.

Billy Eichner is great as Bobby: he’s dramatic and funny in his anger and love and emotion.  Aaron describes Bobby as getting angry at things is your brand.  Which is apt.  And it has to be said, Luke Macfarlane as Aaron is hot.  I’m sure he appeals to many all over the Kinsey scale.

There’s just a bit too much emotional drama for me, not because it was about a gay couple, it was actually refreshing to explore the different tone and issues to unpack surrounding a same sex couple; I just enjoyed the comedy more than the serious moments.

 

Three Thousand Years of Longing

Rated: MThree Thousand Years of Longing

Directed by: George Miller

Written by: George Miller and Augusta Gore

Based on the Short Story, ‘The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye’ by: A. S. Byatt

Produced by: Doug Mitchell and George Miller

Starring: Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.

‘Whatever it is, I’m sure it has an interesting story.’

Three Thousand Years of Longing is a film about stories, about a narratologist, Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) and her fateful discovery of a bottle containing a Djinn (Idris Elba).

Alithea lectures about stories, the old mythos, the science, the metaphor; how people have told each other stories to escape the chaos of the world.

Alithea’s a solitary creature who finds her feelings through stories.  And she’s content with that.

So when the Djinn asks what she desires – she has no answer.  Alithea wishes for nothing.  Besides, she’s read all the stories, she knows that with wishes granted, there is always a cost.

She recites the story of the magic fish discovered by three fishermen, who grants them one wish each.  The first fisherman wishes to be home, his wish is granted, and he disappears.  The second fisherman wishes to be playing in a field with his children – his wish is also granted.  The third fishmen becomes lonely and wishes that his friends were there with him…

Even the jokes about wishes end badly.

But if the Djinn is ever to escape his prison, Alithea must be granted three wishes of her deepest desires.  To convince Alithea that she must desire something even if she doesn’t realise it, the Djinn begins his story.

There’re stories within stories in this film as the Djinn weaves his narrative into a fantastical tale of queens and kings, of sultans and love.

Each chapter is given a title such as, ‘Two Brothers and a Djinn’ and, ‘A Djinn’s Oblivion’.

He’s had a lot of bad luck over his thousands of years of imprisonment.

It’s a sweeping tale with decadent settings of harems and bazaars full of colourful glass bottles, gadgets invented by a hidden third wife who’s frustrated by her bridled genius.

It’s a colourful escapism which is the point of the film (stories within stories).

In the production notes, director and writer, George Miller (Babe (1995), Happy Feet (2006) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)) is quoted: Alithea Binnie is a narratologist. She studies stories throughout the ages. “We seemed to be hard-wired for story” poses Miller. “Why?”

Miller read British author A.S. BYATT’s 1994 short story ‘The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye’ in the late 1990s. “It’s a story that seemed to probe many of the mysteries and paradoxes of life, and so succinctly” Miller states.

The Djinn laments his idiocy of finding himself trapped because of his love of a woman’s company and Alithea finds she has a desire afterall.  There’s a letting go, coming together, letting go to be together.

It just takes a few circles in the film to get there.

I kept thinking, Oh, OK, that’s the end.  But then there’s another part, another chapter.

It felt, ambitious.

But it all comes back around in a satisfying way.

Alithea is free, she’s solitary, she can be and want without losing herself; the reaching out lets her know herself by understanding the Djinn, by the two of them discussing life.

It’s a magical film but also grounded because the characters are genuinely relatable: delightful.

 

Book of Love

Rated: MBook of Love

Directed by: Analeine Cal y Mayor

Written by: David Quantick & Analeine Cal y Mayor

Produced by: Naysun Alae-Carew, Michael Knowles, Allan Niblo & Richard Alan Reid

Starring: Sam Claflin, Verónica Echegui, Fernando Becerril, Horacio Villalobos and Lucy Punch.

‘You’ve never been in love,’ Maria (Verónica Echegui) tells Henry (Sam Claflin).

She can tell by the way he writes, his novel, ‘The Sensible Heart,’ described by Henry as a book about practical love.

Yawn.

That’s what anyone who’s ever read it thinks.

Until Maria translates the book into Spanish, to become the Number 1 Best Seller in Mexico.

She does more than translate, she re-writes Henry’s passionless vision of love into a sex-romp.

He wonders why Mexican fans are sending him sex-pics.

When he finds out about the changes to his book (he doesn’t speak Spanish which adds to the comedy) he’s mortified.  But who cares?  It’s selling.

So when his publisher (Lucy Punch) forces Henry to go to Mexico to promote the book (he didn’t write) it’s a comedy of awkward moments as this stuffy Englishman tries to politely give credit to a book he didn’t write while falling in love with the woman who re-writes him.

Book Of Love lives up to the romance of the title with the extra hint of pink font in the opening credits.

Polite and stuffy yet handsome Englishman meets passionate with unrecognised talent, Mexican single mum, Maria.

Classic romantic set-up.

It’s a comedy too (rom-com), lacy undies thrown on stage included.  And there’s sheep.

It’s a light-weight viewing that rolls along on sweet moments with son and grandpa Max (Fernando Becerril) in the back of the Volkswagen beetle brought along on tour because they can’t be trusted to be alone.  Then there’s the jealous ex with comments like, ‘I promise this is the last time I let you down.’

The humour appealed to my cynicism, so I wanted Maria to succeed.

There’re a few hurdles in this love story to keep it interesting, and a fresh take on the drama that unfolds between new love and letting go of the old.  Or not even letting go just knowing what feels right and what is so obviously wrong.  And understanding the difference between lust and love; how love is an ideal not a reality, that people are the reality of love and that people let you down.  But that passion is also part of love and in the end can lead to one big hot mess but that’s OK.

It all gets a bit unrealistic, in other words a rom-com (what did you expect?!) where I chuckled a few times with the romance sweet without being over cheesy.

Cyrano

Rated: MCyrano

Directed by: Joe Wright

Screenplay by: Erica Schmidt

Based on: The stage musical adapted and directed by Erica Schmidt, from ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ by Edmond Rostand, with music by Aaron & Bryce Dessner and lyrics by Matt Berninger & Carin Besser

Music by: Bryce Dessner & Aaron Dessner

Produced by: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Guy Heeley

Executive Produced by: Erica Schmidt, Sarah-Jane Robinson, Sherraz Shah, Lucas Webb, Matt Berninger, Carin Besser, Aaron Dessner

Starring: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Mendelsohn.

‘My sole purpose on this earth is to love Roxanne (Haley Bennett),’ laments Cyrano (Peter Dinklage).

He at least has the decency to be a little embarrassed of the words uttered to his friend, Le Bret (Bashir Salahuddin).

It’s not the flowery words that embarrass Cyrano, but that he has admitted his love for the unreachable.

He is a midget and she a great beauty to be worshiped.

Cyrano and Roxanne are friends.  Best friends.  If he told her of his true feelings, he would lose her forever.

Cyrano sighs as he states, ‘I am living proof that God has a sick sense of humour.’

Pursued by the Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), Roxanne’s loved by many.

The Duke is rich, she’s poor. Her handmaiden (Monica Dolan) reminds her, ‘Children need love. Adults need money.’

Roxanne wants love more than anything. And thinks she’s found it when she sees the dashing soldier, Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) for the first time.

It’s love at first sight.

Christian is handsome but without a sharp wit. It’s up to Cyrano to write letters on Christian’s behalf, to write all the things he’s ever wanted to tell Roxanne.  Only to be signed by Christian.

Cyrano is a musical romance set at a time of puppet shows, lace and ribbons, duels and corsets.

Not my favourite flavour of film.

I promised myself to keep an open mind.

Expect singing from the outset.

And also some great lines from Cyrano like, ‘Would you defend this… sausage?!’  He describes an actor wearing a red frizzy wig and well past his used-by date.

I quote the dialogue often because there is just so much to quote; the words, the lyrics roll like waves throughout the film.

The love story does cloy with Roxanne’s demand of a handsome Christian filled with handsome words – with the expectation of nothing less.

It’s all very pretty and irritating with the ink on the paper of the first letter making her nervous.

But wow, there are some spectacular scenes of clever camera work of sword fighting and the audience back-and-forth in the theatre; the quiet of breathing.

And then the tears started.

It wasn’t the love story that got me, but the soldiers singing the words of their letter to be sent to their loved ones back home.  The lyrics here are beautiful in their lack of sentiment.  That’s what got to me: the clear-sighted expression of feeling.

The words and lyrics of the film are more like poetic truth than song.

Yes, there are irritating, long-winded moments but Peter Dinklage as Cyrano has a way of balancing the sweetness of the romance with a wry wit.

And once the tears started, the rest of the film built on that emotion.

So I admit, I got into a musical romance.

Marry Me

Rated: PGMarry Me

Directed by: Kat Coiro

Screenplay Written by: John Rogers & Tami Sagher, Harper Dill

Based on the Graphic Novel by: Bobby Crosby

Produced by: Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Jennifer Lopez, Benny Medina, John Rogers

Executive Produced by: Alex Brown, Willie Mercer, Pamela Thur, J. B. Roberts

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Maluma, John Bradley and Sarah Silverman.

Married three times and about to marry for the forth, super star Kat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez) has written a song with her also-a-super-star fiancé, Bastian (Maluma): Marry Me.

They’re set to sing the song at their wedding recorded live to stream across all platforms to over 20 million people making them the two most famous people on the planet.

And in front of all those people, Kat’s world falls apart when Bastian is posted cheating with her assistant.  She sees the post just before rising onto the stage of her wedding.

Enter, Charlie (Owen Wilson).

Divorced and dad of Lou (Chloe Coleman), math teacher with no criminal record and holding up a sign: Marry Me.

They lock eyes.

OK.

So they get married.  But only for show.  It’s a meltdown, an impulsive moment.  It will pass.  The media frenzy will die down.  It’s just for show.

Until it’s not.

I didn’t think I’d get into this movie, the premise being more than a stretch…  Well, not so much these days?!

And I guess that’s of the point of the film, questioning the idea of getting married.  Falling in love with the idea of the person and not who the person really is but what you want them to be.

There’s some foundation to the idea of these superstar with Jennifer Lopez being a singer and dancer in real life (alongside Latin music star Maluma), so the characters had some cred.

I wasn’t one-hundred percent sold on the Charlie character but he had some good lines, ‘I was, I am a fun guy.’  Tongue in cheek.  He is a likeable guy.  It was more the lack of chemistry between the celebrity singer and normal guy Charlie.

This is a film about getting to know each other rather than a steamy romance.

He is a math teacher who goes to bed at 8pm to read a book.

So it’s more about the relationship and the magic of taking that leap of faith.  A romance that has some chuckles but is more about friendship.

It’s a little like, Notting Hill (1999) with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant where the superstar actress falls for the normal guy.  But stretch that to a massive audience and streamed live on social media.

The formula’s always the same: the unlikely match, to the relationship working, to an obstacle, to taking the leap and overcoming the doubt, to tear jerker moment to heart-warming ending.

I’m admit to some cynicism.

But I kinda got into it with the aging British Bulldog, Tank used well to provoke those warm and fuzzies that will encourage hand holding leading up to Valentine’s Day.

Go on, take that leap of faith.  Or don’t.

Either way, I agree with the sentiment, ‘If you want something different you have to do something different.’

 

India Sweets and Spices

Rated: MIndia Sweets and Spices

Directed and Written by: Geeta Malik

Produced by: John Penotti, Sidney Kimmel, Gigi Pritzker, Naomi Despres

Starring: Sophia Ali, Manisha Koirala, Rish Shah, Adil Hussain, Deepti Gupta, Anita Kalathara.

India Sweets and Spices presents a feast of Indian food and a glittering array of saris as the residents of Ruby Hill dress to the hilt for a weekly rotation of dinner parties during the holiday season. When Alia (Sophia Ali), the eldest daughter a successful heart surgeon (Adil Hussain), returns home from her first year away at university she is expected to play the role of demure Indian daughter looking to attract a suitable husband at these gatherings, but she has long ago outgrown her part. Now she cannot even pretend that she doesn’t find life in this bourgeois Indian enclave utterly stultifying. On the night before her departure she confides to a friend that it’s: ‘The place where brain cells go to die’.

During her time at UCLA, Alia has become heavily involved in social justice issues and takes it as her right that she is entitled to speak out and act upon what she believes in. Much to the horror of her mother. Sheila (Manisha Koirala) is not only a bored but devoted housewife and hostess extraordinaire, she is also the unofficial queen of the Ruby Hill social scene, and she is a woman with a past. It is a secret she has been keeping from her children and the community. In a community where everyone has a secret.

Once a haven for new arrivals looking to safely establish themselves in their adopted country, Ruby Hill has over time become a locked cage, where the corrosive tongues of ‘the aunties’ not only keep the residents in and in line but also keep new arrivals out. On the surface life is uncomplicated and easy in this enclave of backyard swimming pools, luxury vehicles and fantasy weddings where a groom might ride in on a tiger, but the entire community is being held hostage to the threat of exposure and embarrassment. It is a powerful deterrent, but the carefully manicured web of illusion this coterie has cultivated around themselves is impossible to maintain, even with the most watchful of blind eyes.

When Alia locks eyes with her new beau (Rish Shah) in the biscuit aisle of the local Indian grocery store and on impulse invites him and his family to a weekly dinner party, it will tug at a thread that will eventually unravel all of the secrets. Beginning with, possibly, the biggest secrets of all. The ones her own family have been keeping from her.

This feminist romantic comedy/ coming of age drama begins with a finely wrought script from Geeta Malik, with some precisely-calibrated lines for Alia to deploy against the ‘aunties’. Originally reading for the part of Alia’s best friend Neha (Anita Kalathara), Sophia Ali has been beautifully cast Alia Kapur as she tenaciously pursues the question, ‘What if we are who we are and then we don’t recognise ourselves anymore?’ It’s not only a question for Alia; the conundrum equally applies to Sheila and Ranjit when their secrets are finally revealed. As it is, perhaps, for many more in their circle.

The Worst Person In The World (Verdens Verste Menneske)

Rated: MA15+The Worst Person In The World

Directed by: Joachim Trier

Screenplay Written by: Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier

Produced by: Thomas Robsahm, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar

Executive Producers: Dyveke Bjøkly Graver, Tom Erik Kjeseth, Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier

Starring: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner, Helene Bjørneby.

Viewed in Norwegian with English Subtitles

“You need to be completely free.”

Julie (Renate Reinsve) stands smoking in a black cocktail dress with the city in the background.

The Worst Person In the World follows Julie as she figures out life.

She starts off studying to be a surgeon, then psychology then photography.

Moving from one thing to the next, she never quite finishes anything.  But she lives and loves.

The film is set out in 12 chapters, with a prologue and epilogue.  This is the analytical part of the film and something the character Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) would appreciate.  He’s a comic creator that analyses everything.

Julie loves him.

But doesn’t love him.

Aksel tells her, You need to be completely free.’

That’s the first time she realises that she loves him.

Until she meets Eivind (Herbert Nordrum).

In an interview with director and screenwriter Joachim Trier, he’s asked to talk, “more about the very literary way the film is broken into chapters?”

“We had this idea early on when writing: to show fragments of a life and that the space between the chapters was as important as what we actually see. This is a coming-of-age film but for grownups who feel like they still haven’t grown up. To find a structure of covering several years in a life, from when Julie is in her mid-twenties to her early thirties, we found the humour of a “literary” framework to help us tell that story. The almost novelistic form also reflects Julie’s longing for a grand literary destiny, almost as if she unconsciously wishes her life to have a literary form.”

I’m trying not to think too deeply about the explanation of, coming-of-age film but for grownups who feel like they still haven’t grown up.  I related to this character, Julie, as she tried to figure out what she wants or why she feels the way she does.

But more than relating to the feelings of how to navigate love while remaining independent and free (yes, am still thinking about the film a week later), the way the film’s put together adds to that feeling of running towards what’s right.

That moment when everything else ceases (literally frozen in the film) as Julie runs through the streets to imagine that feeling of being in the right place.  And then going for it.  It’s hard not to get swept up into it all.

There’s something refreshing about seeing all those silent thoughts shown in a clever way so the film is more than a romance or a drama, there’s a quiet that’s absorbing.  Like the silence is there to allow reflection.

Colours are used to introduce the film: yellow and blue to black and are then circled back to later so there’s this sense of completion, like Julie reaches another layer, like it’s that layer she’s been searching for all along.

And the dialogue adds another element, the, ‘Intellectual Viagra,’ comment.

And, ‘She’s just shy.’

‘That’s what you say about boring people.’

Again, silence used when Aksel says, ‘Kids are intense.’

To which Julie replies by taking a large sip of red wine.

It’s a journey that ended up in places unexpected – sexy, clever, sad and poetic.

If you’re not usually a fan of romance, this is one of the good ones.

Supernova

Rated: M

Directed and Written by: Harry Macqueen

Produced by: Emily Morgan and Tristan Goligher

Starring: Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci, Pippa Heywood, Peter Macqueen, Nina Marlin.

Birds chitter and chirp and early morning sunlight filters in, glancing across two bodies tangled up in their doona and in each other, as they slumber on in their golden cocoon.

If earthly bliss could be captured, this moment might be it.

Of course, this being fiction we know it cannot last.

Actually, there has been a degree of misdirection, so this scene does not really mean exactly what it appears to mean.

Despite what some may fear, this film is far from maudlin. The script is well thought out and subtle, and the performances by Colin Firth as Sam and Stanley Tucci as Tusker are tender and nuanced.

Sam, a concert pianist, and Tusker, a novelist, are embarking on one last road trip in their campervan before Tusker becomes too incapacitated by the early onset dementia he was diagnosed with two years earlier.

The pair plan to wend their way through the countryside of northern England, stopping off wherever they may find themselves, for their first night a supermarket car park, until they reach Sam’s childhood home and his sister, Lily (Pippa Haywood), who now lives there with her husband Clive (Peter Macqueen) and their young daughter (Nina Marlin). From thence, the couple hope to travel on to the concert venue where Sam is to stage what he expects to be both his comeback performance and his swansong.

While Tusker is doing all in his power to ensure that Sam remains closely connected to his career and to the people who care about him, the trip is his idea, Sam, after much soul searching, realises that he is prepared to sacrifice everything to spend whatever time he can with Tusker.

Woven through their banter and everyday bickering and hinted at in the intent behind their gestures, the deep feeling that the couple share is delicately evoked.

Although the country lanes the couple travel along are verdant and lovely, many of the film’s deeper encounters occur at night as Tusker shares his fascination with the cosmos, first with Sam on a sleepless night as they seek out the Milky Way together and then with his niece Charlotte as they lie on the grass staring up at the stars. In some ways, Sam and Tusker’s journey could be seen as a dark night of the soul.

While the title Supernova is clearly related, its meaning was not immediately obvious to me. So, I began by looking at the way a supernova is defined: an unusually bright star that suddenly lights up the sky, even though the star itself no longer exists. It has already exploded. When translated into film the reciprocal moment is quietly devastating. Lily, attempting to persuade Tusker to accept Sam’s help, says, ‘You’re still Tusker. You’re still the guy he fell in love with’.

Tusker replies, ‘No. I’m not.  I just look like him.’

How to maintain their relationship and their love in the face of this unthinkable reality forms the crux of the couple’s dilemma and the scaffolding for a beautifully wrought and haunting film.

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