Review: SUPERNOVA

We open on a vast night sky. One star near the centre briefly expands with light before shrinking into the darkness. Two men entwined naked in a bed. Then we're on a road trip through a damp English view, the passenger quietly poring over a road map and the driver asking questions that are gently ignored. Change the situation for this scene and the location for that and you have the entirety of this film. That sounds like a bad thing but really it should only suggest a subtheme of the story unfolding: patience. Something is coming to an end. The passenger, Tusker, has early onset dementia and his spouse Sam is coming to terms with what will be a much shorter future than they planned. For the nonce the pair reconnect with friends and family in the country and, quietly, the signs of Tusker's decay make their way to the surface.

Sounds like a tearjerker? Sure but when you have a script with poignant wit like Tusker saying he's no longer the guy Sam fell in love with, he just looks like him and performances that render the words to their appropriate weight and a screen time that clocks in under ninety minutes, you've got something you can stick with and you'll happily spare a few tears. Stanley Tucci as Tusker brings his dependable charm but the constant struggle for control within him undercuts that with a dark realism. Always, a welcome screen presence, here he shows us someone whose containment has become the battle. Colin Firth as Sam gives us the fretting Brit who is struggling to show strength when his source for it is withering.

If this still sounds too gloomy or dull for you consider the restraint with the exposure of the symptoms. An Oscar bait version would make the condition the centrepiece and feature at least one explosion of embarrassment by the afflicted before everyone learned and grew (more than one explosion and you've got a Sundance movie trying for Oscar bait). Tucci allows only the tiniest indications of his loss of awareness, slight winces of uncertainty and eyes that sometimes take in mystifying things. Indeed, the closest thing to a loud cathartic moment happens off screen when a couple of dinner plates smash on a kitchen floor. When Sam runs in to check Tusker is sitting at the table staring into the mess in front of him as though trying to see a finished jigsaw puzzle in a pile of pieces. And then he sits at his chair and keeps sinking and his limbs seem to bend like rubber, powerless and displaced. That's Tucci's performance. We really didn't need the big scene when what we have is how it leaves him.

This story of hard acceptance is strengthened by the lightness of its touch, assurance with its language and a trust that its audience will allow themselves along for the ride. Here's an example of that. As the pair are gently bickering while driving, Bowie's Heroes comes on the radio. For a moment Tusker lowers his gaze and listens. It doesn't, (thankfully) suddenly burst into the sonic foreground but sounds like it's playing quietly on the car stereo. That song back in 1977 when he was probably in his teens and excited by the future in his daydreams would have certainly found a place in his personal soundtrack. The moment passes, an ad blares out and the road rolls on.