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ETERNAL BEAUTY
Director: Craig Roberts Cast: Sally Hawkins, Alice Lowe, Billie Piper, Penelope Wilton, David Thewlis, Robert Pugh, Morfyd Clark, Paul Hilton, Boyd Clack, Elysa Welch MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:35 Release Date: 10/2/20 (digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 2, 2020 A deeply unfortunate and irritating comedy, Eternal Beauty patronizes and infantilizes its lead character, who suffers from mental health issues. To top it all off, writer/director Craig Roberts presents a disingenuously romanticized view of her illness. For you see, she's unique and brimming with quirky energy. "Normal is boring," the character says near the movie's end in a statement that's meant as a thesis of empowerment. The moment just comes across as a poor excuse for everything that has come before it. When we first meet Jane (Sally Hawkins), a doctor is treating her for depression, but her problems are more complicated. She hears voices coming from the walls of her cramped apartment. She receives phone calls from a non-existent lover, who professes his affection and, later, instructs Jane to kidnap her nephew so that the three can live together as a family. She is certain that someone or some people are out to get her. Obviously, Jane suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and Roberts frames its causes, partly as abuse from an overbearing mother (played by Penelope Wilton), but mostly as the result of being stood up on her wedding day decades earlier by an unseen fiancé. When a movie's depiction of mental illness is as simplified and jokey as it is here, a little casual sexism to serve as the primary foundation of such a condition isn't going make much difference. It certainly doesn't help. That's for sure. The story rambles as a slice of Jane's life, mostly revolving around her relationships with her parents and two sisters (played by Billie Piper and Alice Lowe). Several flashbacks offer some armchair psychology as to the origins of her issues. Along the way, the movie plays her delusional suspicions and accusations—as well as her mousy-voiced manner, vacant-eyed stares, and physical tics—for strained comedy. Hawkins' performance is admirably authentic, but it's in service of a movie that sees Jane as a joke first, a helpless victim second, and, with the very late and hastened move to receive treatment (prompted by yet another failed romantic relationship with a man, played by David Thewlis, who also suffers from intentionally undefined mental illness), a figure worthy of some acceptance. As a character who deserves some decency and respect, though, Jane isn't afforded such seemingly basic treatment. Eternal Beauty possesses little compassion and even fewer reasons to laugh. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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