Picturehouse Blog

How do you protect someone vulnerable whom you love without away their freedom? That is the quietly gripping question at the heart of Queen At Sea, an intimate family drama that premiered to a rapturous reception at this year's Berlin Film Festival and won two Silver Bears. Not that you need any excuse to watch Juliette Binoche. The Oscar-and-pretty-much-every-other-major-award-winning actress plays Amanda, a stressed-out, newly single academic who returns to London with her teenage daughter, Sara (Florence Hunt). Amanda has stepped in to care for her mother, Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), whose advancing dementia has left her increasingly unable to communicate. 

Drama arises when Amanda clashes with Leslie's devoted husband, Martin, played by the great Tom Courtenay. Believing her mother can no longer consent to an intimate relationship, Amanda calls the authorities on her stepfather. Meanwhile, Sara is beginning her own teenage sexual awakening, spiralling the family into a moral maze where love, intimacy and autonomy become increasingly difficult to separate.

Queen At Sea marks American writer-director Lance Hammer's first film in 18 years, following his much-acclaimed debut Ballast, and proves every bit worth the wait. The film was inspired by his desire to explore the difficult moral choices being navigated in the privacy of family homes all around us, every day. He brings a boldand unflinching yet scrupulously non- judgemental eye to a profoundly human story about people trying, imperfectly, to do right by one another. 

Binoche is one of cinema's most brilliant and instinctive performers and brings intelligence and vulnerability to the role of a woman carrying the weight of impossible decisions. However, the fi lm is illuminated by a trio of exceptional performances. At 88, a decade after his garlanded performance in Andrew Haigh's 45 Years, Courtenay delivers a career-best turn. Yet it is Calder-Marshall, portraying the ailing Leslie with extraordinary physical precision, who gives the film its brave, fragile and unforgettable beating heart.

 Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

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Queen at Sea is in cinemas from 18 September — Book Now!