Sarah Polley's brave, mature directorial feature debut ruminates on an elegant Ontario couple (Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent) who face the spectre of Alzheimer's. Adapted from an Alice Munro story.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2007
Away from Her 2006
Sarah Polley's debut feature is as considered and mature as her performances in such films as The Sweet Hereafter, My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words (also in this programme). Adapted from a short story by Canadian writer Alice Munro, the film is about an elegantly ageing couple, Fiona (Julie Christie) and Grant (Gordon Pinsent), who face the tragic dissolution of their life together after Fiona is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Insisting on going out with dignity, Fiona checks into a nursing home, and this turns out to be only the starting point for this brave, surprising film encompassing love, sex and the elusiveness of memory. Left alone in their empty home, Grant is wracked with guilt over past indiscretions. Meanwhile, Fiona develops an attachment to a fellow patient she claims to have known in her youth.
"A precociously assured and mature work, at once humble and bold, that keeps faith with Munro's precise, graceful prose while tailoring its linear progression into shapely cinematic form." — Ella Taylor, Village Voice