Supernova – an incredibly beautiful and sensitive film about dementia

Tusker and Sam have been a couple for years and are taking a campervan trip to the Lake District to revisit some of their favourite places and reconnect with family and friends.

After that, Sam – a classical pianist – is to give a recital that he insists will be his last, as he is determined to care for his partner, who has been diagnosed with early onset dementia.

But Tusker – a writer himself – has other plans which, as they head north, he hasn’t shared.

Written and directed by Harry Macqueen, this is an incredibly sensitive exploration of a couple facing not simply mortality, but the incremental nature of the mortality that dementia inflicts on people.

It is never mawkishly sentimental, but is intensely moving – not least in being an unflinching look at a relationship of length, with the joking and bickering as well as the tenderness.

The cinematography from Dick Pope is beautiful. I was born just to the east of the Lake District: my family moved to Bolton when I was three, but we visited regularly for a substantial part of my childhood and youth, staying with family friends who ran a corner shop in Tebay or those who had a fell farm not far away.

The latter stays in particular were some of the happiest days of that part of my life. Though I haven’t been back for many years, it all felt instantly familiar, and the lingering shots of the nature of the area are simply gorgeous.

While there’s a section of the film where there is a – very good – supporting cast, this is essentially a two-hander. And Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as Sam and Tusker respectively are both on absolutely superb form. Enormous subtlety and nuance from the pair.

The film originally premiered at the 68th San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2020, and then the following year in US and UK cinemas, Supernova is now streaming on Netflix.

It’s a difficult subject, but Macqueen and team have made a very, very fine film – and ultimately, an uplifting and grown-up one about love. Make sure you have tissues close by.

A sweet look at ageing, loneliness, friendship and more

Milton Robinson is nearing 80, a widower living on his own, with an estranged son, and a daughter who, worried that her father is starting on a dementia pathway is naggin him to see a doctor.

One night, a UFO crash lands in his garden and a small alien appears. After his initial terror, Milton takes the nonverbal and apparently unthreatening alien inside and treats him as a guest.

He tries to tell the authorities, his daughter, a shop assistant and a local council meeting that he regularly attends, but all assume he’s imagining it. But then an acquaintance, Sandy, drops by and sees the alien, then names them Jules.

This is a really interesting and subtle point. All the characters assume – without any side – that the extra-terrestrial is male (they can pilot a spaceship, for instance), but we never find out, while Jules as a name is gender neutral.

Sandy warns Milton not to tell anyone else – before another acquaintance, Joyce, spots them and demands to be in on the action, though possibly from nefarious motives.

However, secret services monitoring knows that something has fallen to earth in the vicinity of the small town and the hunt is on.

Billed as a science fiction comedy-drama, it’s fairly slender in terms of the comedy aspect, but there is gentle humour. Watch out for the ET nods in Milton’s speeches to the local council and a running t-shirt gag later on.

Written by Gavin Steckler and directed by Marc Turtletaub, it is gentle and heart-warming, with themes of loneliness, friendship, kindness and family rifts played out sensitively, and over a pleasingly tight 87 minutes.

Jules themselves is very well done in terms of leaving plenty to the imagination throughout, with Jade Quon helping create and maintain the mystery around the character.

But it also relies on an excellent central trio. Ben Kingsley does a really lovely and delicate job with Milton, while Harriet Sansom Harris as Sandy and Jane Curtin as Joyce are also in very fine form.

Finally, Zöe Winters as Denise, Milton’s daughter, lends good support.

All in all, Jules was never going to set the cinematic world on fire, but it’s a sweet film, full of heart. Currently streaming on Sky Cinema, it’s well worth an hour and a half of your time.

The Duchess

Unexpectedly for me at least, the lockdown has produced a surge of creativity that I did not expect.

For the first time since my early twenties, when the results were predictably embarrassing (little experience of the world combined with a restricted worldview, given the restrictions of my home life), I have been writing poetry.

For the moment, I’m grouping what I write under a general banner of Lockdown Lines.

They are not all about the lockdown, but they have all been written while I am in lockdown.

I have posted a few already. This is one of those that is not about the coronavirus, but is about a lady who was in the bed opposite me when I was in hospital two years ago.

No notes or anything like that were taken at the time, but I have never forgotten the incidents I describe below. The section about what her past might have included is entirely from my imagination: all the rest really happened.

My father had died just a week before I went into hospital – a key cause was dementia. Perhaps that’s why Doris remains so clearly in my mind.

The Duchess

Swaddled in zebra-stripe velour she dozes,

Lunch barely touched on the over-bed table.

“Doris,” the time-starved nurse had pleaded,

“You must like fish and chips” ...

As though not eating was entirely a choice.

Broken hips will heal in time once reset;

A mind tick-tick-tocked into the past is gone.

Her son sits beside her, head bowed low;

There’s nothing to say and

He makes no move to disturb her 40 winks.

Next day, Annie and Joan urge her to “Get up!

“Try out your bionic peg!” they cackle.

I call out that the physio’s not here

And at last a nurse comes,                 

Bringing an end to impending disaster.                     

Doris, Doris duchess of The Dolphin,       

Known in the Duke’s Head but never in the Florin;

There you’d sip a stout or a port in a storm

Laughing with the girls and singing until dawn;

Around the Joanna you would croon a bar or two,

You could smoke like a trooper and tell a joke so blue that

You’d set the crowds ahowling and make a sailor blush

But you were always a lady and never just some lush.

On the bedside cupboard there is a bottle,

Gaudy plastic full of liquid pinky red:

‘Cherryade’ or so the label claims.

Hardly a Cherry B,

Never mind a stout or a port (in a storm).

In the middle of the night Doris demands

“Boy! Boy?” Querulous, tremulous and lost.

A nurse tries to calm her. Soothing sounds.

At last she drifts again ...

As though not sleeping was entirely a choice.

27 April 2020