"This inexpressibly painful and sad story featuring angry, complex, brilliant late-career performances from Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall is about dementia, the endgame of care and the decisions that need to be made when the spouse-carer is as vulnerable as the patient (and whose right it is to take those decisions). It is about the nature of intimacy between the two; and about the moment this becomes a problem for the grownup children with a conflicting sense of their own responsibilities."
"Queen at Sea is directed by indie US film-maker Lance Hammer, absent since his 2008 Sundance winner, Ballast. This is an almighty comeback, a lacerating movie bearing comparison with Michael Haneke's Amour or Gaspar Noe's Vortex. It concludes with a heartbreakingly ironic and enigmatic final sequence refusing the traditional final cadence; a diptych of love, contrasting the pleasures and expectations of intimacy across the generations."
"The setting is a gloomy and wintry London, with porridge-grey cloud cover. Juliette Binoche plays Amanda, a recently divorced academic. She has taken a sabbatical with her teen daughter, Sara (Florence Hunt), to be closer to her elderly mother, Leslie (Calder-Marshall) who has dementia and her stepfather, Martin (Courtenay). One dull weekday morning, she looks in on Martin and Leslie, catching them having sex, with a mask of incomprehension on her mother's face."
Queen at Sea portrays late-life dementia and the fraught endgame of caregiving through intense, late-career performances by Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall. Lance Hammer returns with a lacerating film compared to Amour and Vortex and an enigmatic final diptych contrasting generational intimacy. The story is set in a gloomy, wintry London and follows Amanda, a recently divorced academic who returns with her teenage daughter to be near her elderly mother and stepfather. A confrontation erupts when Amanda discovers Martin and Leslie having sex and accuses Martin of rape after medical advice indicates Leslie can no longer give meaningful consent. Martin argues that marital intimacy comforts both the patient and the carer and insists on its vital role.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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