KEY POINTS:
Herald Rating: * * * * *
Cast: Julie Christie, Michael Murphy, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis
Director: Sarah Polley
Running time: 110 mins
Rating: M, contains offensive language
Screening: Bridgeway, Rialto
Verdict: Deft, assured, unpredictable and utterly engrossing story of a woman whose descent into dementia follows an unusual course.
Iris, in which Judi Dench played Iris Murdoch as she succumbed to Alzheimer's disease, was solid rather than inspired. The woefully ignored Swedish film A Song for Martin was a much better, if far more harrowing, treatment of the subject. I gave both four stars.
On that scale, this film, the feature debut by a woman who was barely 27 when she shot it, deserves six or seven. Of the four brilliant performances that sustain it, the standout is by Julie Christie, ravishing at 66, who communicates as much with utter stillness as in her beautifully articulated lines.
Based on an Alice Munro short story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain, the film follows a woman's descent into dementia. Fiona Anderson (Christie) is married to retired academic Grant (Pinsent), whose solicitous attention to his wife's needs seems to presage a film that will be a dignified weepie. But Munro and Polley, who scripted, have more complicated things in mind. There are matters in the Andersons' past that are still resounding in the present. And though Fiona is not going to go gentle into that good night, she's smart enough to know that "all we can aspire to in this situation is a little bit of grace".
To detail the story's main plot twist would be unfair to the storytellers, but it's a cracker, demonstrating equal sensitivity to the nature of love and to the sometimes bleakly absurd disintegration of the ageing mind. As Fiona decays, and adopts her own survival strategies, Grant becomes the one in denial. By the time that the significance of the title becomes clear, it has built up plenty of emotional wallop.
Away From Her is ultimately a love story, and a heartbreaking one at that. Polley, an accomplished actor (she was the wheelchair-bound heroine of The Sweet Hereafter and is stunning in The Secret Life of Words which releases here in a fortnight) has a deft control of pace and tone, making unobtrusive use of snowfall as a symbol of a dimming mind and has sourced some great music - notably from Canadians K.D. lang and Neil Young. This is something extra special.
