Movies of the Week
Away From Her, Spider-Man 3...
See it or skip it? This week's new movie releases By Paul Matthews
Away From Her
Sarah Polley’s feature directorial debut, Away From Her, is about what happens when the early rush of love fades and something else develops in its place. It’s about what it means to be faithful and the impossibility of letting go of the past. If this all sounds frightfully earnest, it is. But, in an ironic age, the earnest filmmaker is often the one performing the most radical act. When Fiona (Julie Christie) develops Alzheimer’s, she checks into a nursing home, forgets her marriage of 40 years and develops a tender relationship with Aubrey (Michael Murphy), a more infirm and dependent patient. Heartbroken, her husband, Grant (Gordon Pinsent), is forced to sit and watch as his wife drifts away from him. When Aubrey’s wife (Olympia Dukakis) pulls him from the institution, Fiona spirals into a debilitating depression and Grant must negotiate visiting times with her. In the meantime, he finds a new love, learning along the way that aging demands painful compromises. Polley summons gorgeous performances from her leads: Pinsent perfectly captures the pain of reconciling past love with soul-crushing reality, while Christie expertly conveys the struggle of coping with creeping memory loss. A perfect antidote to the impending tsunami of inane, ham-fisted Hollywood blockbusters, Away From Her is intelligent, unassuming and quietly heartbreaking. SEE IT NOW
Away From Her is now playing at Canada Square (2200 Yonge St.), the Varsity (55 Bloor St. W.), the Queensway (1025 The Queensway) and others.
