A film by Lance Hammer
With: Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, Steven Cree, Florence Hunt, Anna Calder-Marshall, Michelle Jeram, Elizabeth Rushbrook, Noah Hunt Basden
As advanced dementia erodes an older woman’s ability to communicate her inner life, her husband and daughter struggle to act in her best interests, navigating love and the fragile boundaries between care, protection and autonomy.
Our rate : ★★
Queen at Sea, in its opening moments, suggests a film that will be difficult to sustain over time, and probably harsh. After an exposition that very suddenly—and, let’s admit it, surprisingly for the viewer—introduces its characters one by one and, above all, the initial situation, beyond the subject itself, we wonder how Lance Hammer will be able to fuel his narrative and move it forward on the one hand, and on the other, bring it to a close. We are only at the beginning of the film, and yet we are already asking ourselves this question about the conclusion, so much so that the opening seems to go hand in hand with an unsolvable question and a painful conclusion.
Haneke was interested in the question of dependence, from a unique and radical angle, that of the feeling that unites two people who see themselves growing old and becoming demented, which was worth the title “Amour”. It is therefore a perspective that focuses heavily on the elderly and what they feel or may feel. Here, the strange title “Queen at Sea” gives no more clues than that it is poetic… However, the mere presence of Juliette Binoche in the cast (but also in support of the entire project, which took a long time to come to fruition, with American filmmaker Lance Hammer returning to cinema after a very long absence) indicates that this time around, the focus will also be on those close to the characters, and not just on people at the end of their lives. This raises a moral dilemma, which is quite provocative in its own way. From a film with a subject, we shift to a film with questions, which we think then carries an argument that we imagine we must examine in turn, looking at each person’s point of view and placing the viewer in the position of judge, without resorting to a trial film. A moral dilemma à la Farahdi, we say to ourselves, which calls for a clever script that distills its arguments one by one with consistency, logic, and twists and turns. A radical narrative approach (à la Haneke) to stay on topic, we think again. But here’s the thing: the question, which is unsolvable, brings with it an obvious pitfall.
Admittedly, raising this question, this moral dilemma, this gray area, shows a certain acuity and deserves our attention—how did this subject come to the director’s mind, could a real news story have inspired it? Are we dealing with a purely theoretical reflection? But clearly, given his sensitivity, the treatment must be completely neutral. For the project to succeed, it is essential that the director’s perspective be completely erased, that there be no message.
Yes, but the damage has already been done: asking the question already reveals a point of view. Potentially disturbing, or at the very least unsettling, if not provocative. Since we are talking about marital rape (legally speaking, a husband who has sexual relations with his wife without her consent is committing rape), so asking whether this definition applies in the case of a person who loses their consent is more or less tantamount to questioning this relatively new definition of rape, which nevertheless makes it possible to criminalize acts that are often far too trivialized in the name of good old marital duty. Be that as it may. Very quickly, we notice the quality of the overall acting, the effort to create authenticity, whether it be Tom Courtenay’s ability to appear sincere, Anna Calder-Marshall’s ability to imitate dementia, or Juliette Binoche’s ability to play the daughter who puts her life on hold and sacrifices herself to help her mother and stepfather. However, the story gets bogged down by repeating the motif too much, as we might have feared, despite an approach that seems to want to offer some breathing space by providing a counterpoint in the form of the trajectory of the little girl, a young teenager who is about to experience her first emotions. This is a clever and relevant plot twist that suggests the film might escape a little, or abandon its anxiety-inducing subject, since we know there is no good answer. In the second third, Lance Hammer also surprises us with a rather unexpected event, just when it seemed that the (bleak) future was set in stone. A third event, which could have served as a conclusion, plays out in a very radical way, testing the viewer’s nerves. Once again, the drama is skillful, but disturbing and confusing, with fiction clearly taking over, departing from the realism that the subject itself called for in order to better touch and sensitize the audience. The brutal dramatic narrative contrasts with some other formal intentions, still scripted, that are rather interesting, as we explained, on the side of the young teenager, her taking a step back, her circuit-breaker function. The prospect of the end of life rubs shoulders with that of the adult life to come, a sense of responsibility rubs shoulders with innocence, fatality with chance, love with indifference.
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