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.