QUEEN AT SEA World Cinema

Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall shared the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance at the Berlin Film Festival in Lance Hammer’s sensitive and devastating family drama exploring the complexities of aging, sexuality and parental care. Entering the North London townhouse of her aging mother, Amanda (Juliette Binoche), along with her teenage daughter Sarah (Florence Hunt), walk in on Amanda’s stepfather Martin (Tom Courtenay) having sex with her mother Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), who has Alzheimer’s disease. Amanda is irate with Martin, as she had previously explained to him that Leslie’s doctor has declared that she is now incapable of giving consent. Martin is indignant, insisting that Leslie, his wife of nearly 20 years, still knows how to communicate with him, and in fact initiates sex with him. Amanda makes a formal complaint to the police. Investigations and examinations follow, and Leslie is moved to a senior care home. But things get worse. In his first film since 2008’s BALLAST, Hammer delves deep into the daunting realities of grown children navigating caregiver and guardian roles for their aging parents. But QUEEN AT SEA goes further than most dementia dramas, daring to take a hard look at questions of senior sexuality and third-party assessments of consent, a family’s intergenerational misunderstandings and interpersonal mistrust, and a health care system fraught with flaws and shortcomings even under the best of circumstances. With their masterful and brave performances, Courtenay, Calder-Marshall and Binoche make the struggles of these family members feel real, and compel us to countenance the full arc of a life’s drama. –Todd Hitchcock