Starring Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, and Anna Calder-Marshall, Queen at Sea received its world premiere in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, where it won both the Silver Bear Jury Prize and the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance for both Courtenay and Calder-Marshall.
The film follows Amanda (Binoche) and her stepfather, Martin (Courtney), at odds over a moral quandary involving Amanda’s mother, Leslie (Calder-Marshall). In the advanced stages of dementia, they quarrel over whether Leslie has lost all ability to make critical decisions in her own best interests, and, if so, who is responsible – a spouse, a child, an institution – for making such a determination? As Amanda and Martin are forced to make increasingly difficult choices, the repercussions spiral out of their control.
The Garden Cinema View:
Following the hyper-subjectivity of Florian Zeller’s The Father, Gaspar Noe’s grimly experimental Vortex, and the more formulaic Still Alice, Lance Hammer’s first film in 19 years provides a mature, clear-sighted, and lowkey exploration of neurodegenerative disease as well as a surprising treatise on later-life desire. Whilst this is an undoubtedly tough watch, Queen of Sea is propelled by two effortless turns from Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay coming to terms with the cognitive decline of (respectively) their mother and wife Leslie (a very special performance by Anna Calder-Marshall). This is a film that asks its audience to face some difficult questions, but is frequently very moving, not least in the small, wordless interactions between Courtenay and Calder-Marshall (who played Hamlet and Orphelia opposite each other at the start of their careers in the 1960s). Adolpho Veloso’s (just Oscar nominated for Train Dreams) cinematography is unfussy and intimate, but captures an authentic sense of a late winter in North London locations such as Highgate New Town, the abandoned platforms on the Parkland Walk, and the muddy paths of Parliament Hill.
