This is no ordinary love: Neeson and Manville make cancer drama worth seeing
“How do you say to someone ‘don’t die’?” a character asks in Ordinary Love, which pretty much sets the tone for this grim but well done film about a long married couple coping with the wife’s recent breast cancer diagnosis. The movie is startling realistic, so much so that anyone who has been through cancer (either as a patient, or as a supportive family member/friend) may want to avoid it for the unpleasant memories it may bring back. Consider that your upfront trigger warning. But Irish husband/wife directing team Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn, working from a script by Irish playwright Owen McCafferty, have crafted a nuanced, raw, and well-acted picture that, despite the downer subject matter, is worth your time.
Having a playwright as a screenwriter helps when what you have is essentially a two-person chamber piece. That the film feels like a stage play much of the time is not necessarily a bad thing. Lead actors Liam Neeson (Widows; The Commuter), as husband Tom, and Lesley Manville (The Phantom Thread) as his wife Joan are nicely paired here, with Neeson effectively dialing down to low-key mode.
The film follows the couple through their daily routines, from power walks together to grocery shopping and sharing meals. Neeson and Manville exhibit a comfort and familiarity with each other that is impressive in its realism. We learn that the couple has already survived one tragedy — the loss of their only daughter — but they seem to have processed that grief. So when Joan discovers a lump in her breast while showering one day, the couple’s “ordinary” life, as it were, suddenly becomes extraordinary: scary, sad, uncomfortable, and, most of all, uncertain. McCafferty’s script looks at how Joan’s diagnosis affects each partner, individually, and as part of a couple. Tom and Joan’s shifting reactions, while not always easy to watch, are always honest — almost painfully so.
The movie does a remarkable job portraying the stark realities of having a serious illness like cancer. Much of the film takes places in austere, sterile hospital rooms, as we follow Joan through doctors’ appointments, tests, surgery, and chemo. The bleak quiet of waiting rooms and the fluorescent harshness of hospital cafeterias become Tom and Joan’s new daily existence. “Hospitals remind me of death,” Tom says as at one point, and you know what he means, as he struggles to be a supportive partner to Joan, while wrestling with his own fear of possibly losing her.
The one major detail that’s missing from the film, however, which, given its otherwise notable authenticity, feels glaring, is that we never learn what stage cancer Joan has. We are with Joan and Tom when they receive the news of her cancer after her biopsy, and that the script doesn’t have the doctor give them this information, even as they ask a ton of questions, seems like a huge flaw. Anyone who’s ever been through cancer well knows the importance of that part of the diagnosis, and to leave it out, in favor of vague platitudes from the doctor, makes it hard to fully understand the extent of what Joan is going through.
But Joan and Tom’s emotional ups and downs — from strained fights to tearful reconciliations — are conveyed so skillfully that you’ll find yourself overlooking one small flaw in accuracy, and you’ll want to continue with them on their journey.
The only other character who figures somewhat prominently is Peter (David Wilmot), a former teacher of Joan and Tom’s daughter. Joan runs into him in the cancer center waiting room, and they bond over their cancer diagnoses. We learn Peter’s prognosis is less hopeful than Joan’s, and so his story makes for a potent contrast to Joan and Tom’s. Both have separate moments with Peter that give them different perspectives on their situation. When Peter’s partner Steve (Amit Shah) says at one point, “All we did is sit together… It’s all we needed to do,” it echoes a similar line Tom tells Joan earlier: “We’ve got to continue on as normal — that’s all we can do.” Even in the face of disease and death, the film tells us, the unexpected power of living an ordinary life will see us through.
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Ordinary Love opens today at Bay Area theaters.
