Never Steady, Never Still
- Director: Kathleen Hepburn
- Writer: Kathleen Hepburn
- Producer: James Brown; Tyler Hagan
CGiii Comment
First and foremost, Shirley Henderson's performance is utterly mesmerising.
Secondly, that said performance deserved [much] better camera-work and a more thought-out narrative.
Imagine you are an 18-year old boy [battling with your sexuality], working on an oil-field in the middle-of-nowhere, leaving behind your [recently] widowed mother - who lives alone, quite literally, in the back-of-beyond - who just happens to be suffering from debillitating, advanced Parkinson's Disease. Any decent child would drop tools, in the blink of an eye, and return back to the family's nest to offer support and care. Nooo, not here! Instead, he keeps on working and has a fleeting same-sex thought in the shower [blink and you'll miss it]...
What could have been a fantastically emotional mother-and-son film - sadly - wasn't. Why couldn't he have just stayed after the funeral? Thereby developing a co-dependent relationship that could have warmed the coldest of hearts...that opportunity was staring you in the face! And yet the director chose to explore other erroneous avenues...what young man [battling with his sexuality] would ask a boyfriended, pregnant, 17 year old girl out? What boyfriended, pregnant, 17 year old girl would accept? The implausibilities are just too much to bear.
Ooooh we so wanted to love this film. Still, that performance makes it worth a watch.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
A mother struggles to take control of her life in the face of advanced Parkinson's disease, while her son battles his sexual and emotional identity amongst the violence of Alberta's oil field work camps.
Cast & Characters
Shirley Henderson as Judy;
Théodore Pellerin as Jamie;
Mary Galloway as Kaly;
Nicholas Campbell as Ed