TAKE MY HAND - Mark Reviews Movies

Take My Hand, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 29, 2024

At the start, Take My Hand tells us it's based on a true story, but it's not until the end that we realize what and whose story it is. It's a personal one for co-writer/director John Raftopoulos, who has changed the names and who knows what else beyond the foundation of it to tell the story of a decades-long romance with a significant pause in the middle. Well, the story eventually gets to the romance, which is an odd choice, to say the least.

Raftopoulos' intentions are obviously good with this movie, for reasons that are blatantly apparent with its coda, some connecting of the dots, and a little bit of research. We'll leave it at that, if only because the movie doesn't succeed, despite the intentions, a fine central performance, and genuinely romantic premise. This might be the case of a filmmaker being too close to the material, because it expects us to fill in the gaps of the narrative that, knowing the story as well as he does, might not have existed in Raftopoulos' mind while writing and making the movie.

We meet a teenaged Laura (Meg Fraser), who lives somewhere in Australia, loves to ride horses, and hopes to get into some college that will allow her to leave home. Her father Peter (Darren Gilshenan) is one of her high school teachers and, apparently, a bit of a taskmaster at home, too (We have to take Laura's word on the matter, since the only sign of it is a scene of the father scolding her for appearing to help a friend cheat on a test, which feels a bit generous under the circumstances, honestly). Meanwhile, her mother Joan (Robyn Gibbes) is enduring the early stages of multiple sclerosis, but mom doesn't want her illness to impact the course of her daughter's life.

Things change, though, when Laura meets Michael (Xavier Molyneux), the son of a local grocer whose own life course seems set. He plays rugby and wants to scout for a professional team one day, but his father expects him to take over the family business. The two teens meet when he drops off a delivery at her house, and soon enough, they're riding horses, talking about the future, and having a very chaste romance together.

The obvious happens. Laura is accepted at a university in London, and she decides to go. Michael insists, too, because he knows she'll regret it if she doesn't.

Twenty years later, Laura, now played by Radha Mitchell, has a vague business job in London, is married to fellow busy businessperson Jason (Bart Edwards), and has three sons with her husband. One day at one of the boys' soccer game, she collapses, and a doctor informs her that a brain scan displays signs of MS.

Admirably, much of the middle section of the narrative is devoted to showing the disease's effects on Laura's body, life, and relationships. Her hands begin quaking outside of her control. As time passes (with no sense of it, by the way, which is one of the reasons the whole story feels rushed), she begins walked with a cane, has more episodes of falling and/or losing consciousness, and starts forgetting things on occasion.

She loses her job (a lawsuit ready to happen but just a complication here), but Jason keeps going about his, with long hours and international trips, as if nothing has changed. The guy is presented as such a coldhearted cad that, later, one wonders Raftopoulos is making a not-so-subtle dig at the fictional character's real-life counterpart. The husband's exit is so sudden, final, and essentially forgotten by the movie that it might be the case, or else, it comes across as odd if the character's fate is based on reality.

Either way, little of this has to do with the central romance, but stranger still, the last third or so of the movie, which puts the romance front and center, has little to do with the love story, either. Sure, Laura returns to Australia with her sons, lives with her parents, and eventually meets an older Michael, now played by Adam Demos. The two have about three scenes together catching up with their lives before they start talking seriously about taking the next step together.

If the idea is that their love has carried on through the intervening years, it's not communicated well here, since the chemistry between Mithcell, who is quite commendable otherwise, and Demos is reserved at best. The screenplay, co-written with the director by Davie Paterson, is in such a hurry to get to the end result of this romance that it pretty much forgets to allow the characters and, by extension, us to experience it happening. After all, the movie has a point to make about how time, distance, and illness can't get in the way of true love, and it'll make that point, regardless of whether or not it bothers to actually live in it and let us feel it.

The idea of Take My Hand is lovely, especially when one realizes the movie's inspiration. The execution of that conceit leaves a lot to be desired.

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