Andy Kelleher’s accomplished drama debut is packed with deft performances as its characters make the best of a grim situation
Andy Kelleher has directed documentaries about the film-makers Carol Reed, Alan Clarke and Chris Petit, but now makes an accomplished fiction debut with a film hovering in the edgelands of
London, the south-east and on the protracted plains of middle age, receding out towards uncertainty. It concerns a medical diagnosis that should be devastating, but – aided by a deftly off-key performance from lead
Actor Cathy Naden – actually functions as an awakening.
Naden plays fortysomething history lecturer Kathy, whose impulsive behaviour has begun to unsettle her friends. Stuck in a zombie marriage, she takes up with gangly, long-haired landscape gardener Nick (Jerry Killick) after throwing him a line next to his vintage BMW: “You can take me for a spin some time.” Alarmingly forthright has become her social modus operandi. She wakes up one morning on a disused railway platform after a night of alfresco boozing with a stranger. When her
Friends press her to get a brain scan, the news is not reassuring: she has fronto-temporal dementia, which can be lived with, but not cured. “It’s not Alzheimer’s,” husband Tim (Matthew Jure) feebly comforts her.