Queen at Sea

There have been many films over the years to deal with aging, and specifically with dementia, with many too maudlin to consider but the occasional gem shining through. Queen at Sea is one of the gems, but it is not a film that will leave a viewer feeling warm and fuzzy. Unlike the highly effective Away From Her, this film does not try to offer hope. Instead, it crafts a believable, relatable tale with characters (mostly) to match, then makes us care about them as they journey through the events of a sometimes exhausting story.

Courtesy Greenwich Entertainment

It helps that the film is headlined by Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay, two of the finest actors in the world. Courtenay, now 89 years old, is as vital and full of blood and passion as he has ever been. Here, he portrays Martin, a man married to his wife for two decades, while Binoche plays his step daughter. Her mother, and Martin’s wife, has dementia and doctors have said she is not able to understand what she is doing, nor consent to anything. Yet, Martin insists on having sex with his wife, to his step-daughter’s horror. So, she calls the police on him, and he is branded a sexual criminal, with her mother put into the system.

There is far more than all that, including a subplot with the Binoche character’s daughter, but that character and her storyline are not nearly as interesting or important as what we see unfold between the three main characters in the A story. Here, an act of frustration and anger upends an entire family. It is, in many ways, a film about distance and loss and how those can, or cannot, be closed quickly or how fully.

Courtesy Greenwich Entertainment

It is also a film that in one scene provides the viewer with the stereotypical “angry and overbearing police” character but then sneaks in a social worker you expect to be a monster from the most cloying Robin William’s 90s ham-fisted drivel. A character that surprises you with its depth, and ultimately its compassion. Indeed, the film is all about surprises and characters not being what they appear or what you would assume them to be. It must say something about how we as audiences have grown accustomed or trained to expect the worst.

Lance Hammer, the writer and director of the film, shows a real gift for working with his actors as well as his crew, to create a natural, yet not dull experience. The cinematography, by Adolpho Veloso — who lensed last year’s Train Dreams — proves here that he is a master of light, creating images through the use of color and scope which always highlight the humanity and drama of any sequence.  There are times where it feels like a documentary, and that is absolutely a note of praise.

Courtesy Greenwich Entertainment

While this is one of the years better films so far, it is not perfect and that subplot with the daughter is again the reason why. The juxtaposition of the two stories, one about youth finding love and sexual awakening, and the other about the elderly dying and being desperate for any sense of physical or emotional intimacy, is a noble effort but its execution is both too obvious and too belabored. It does not help that Florence Hunt seems to have been given the one character that needed work. A more charismatic performer might have imbued the part with some rooting interest but here, her Sara comes off as a brat that falls into the cliché of angsty teen reeling from parental separation. For a film as wise and emotionally mature in its main story, it is a shame the secondary tale did not match it. Had it done so, the film might have achieved true greatness.

Queen at Sea is now playing in select theaters.