Edie review: Sheila Hancock’s exceptional performance hits the heights.
Edie review by Freda Cooper.
Edie review
We’re in the middle of another grey glut. Just a few weeks ago, The Leisure Seeker arrived on screens and promptly headed off into the sunset. Where it belonged. At the start of next month, Fonda, Keaton, and co. open the doors on their wine-fuelled Book Club. Sandwiched in the middle is a smaller British film with no A-listers. And it’s probably the best of the bunch.
Like The Leisure Seeker, Simon Hunter’s Edie is about a potentially final trip. Not an especially original idea, then, but one that both inspires and is devoid of the patronising sentiment that so often blights movies aimed at – and about – older people. Most of Edie’s (Sheila Hancock) life has been dominated by her husband: she was his carer for the bulk of their marriage. All she has to show for that dedication are her diaries, written for her own consumption, and an inevitably sour outlook on life. But, in her 80s and with her husband now dead, she decides to do something she’d planned years ago. Climb Suilven, a distinctive Scottish mountain, despite the knocks and bumps, the weather and the limitations that go with her age.
The choice of actress to play the title role was crucial to the success of the film and Hunter has played a blinder in his choice of Hancock, who delivers a performance full of determination, dignity and more than a little vinegar. Edie feels her life has been wasted: life dealt her a lousy hand and now is the first time she’s been able to grasp life with both hands and make her mark somehow. That determination makes her unexpectedly endearing, as does her physical vulnerability, and Hancock gives an exceptional performance. She’s hardly ever off the screen, with the camera closely examining the toll age and life, in general, has taken on her, but also allowing her to use her expressions to tell so many stories. It’s a deeply emotional performance but never hampered by being soft focussed or, indeed, softened in any way.
Not that Edie completely understands what she’s taking on. It’s a climb that’s not just challenging for her but for anybody that does it: the landscape may be beautiful, but it’s full of challenges like the ever-changing weather, bogs, the rocky terrain. It’s all alien territory for anybody who, like her, have lived their entire life in the city. However, she doesn’t do it by herself, having a guide in the shape of Jonny (the ever-likable Kevin Guthrie) who co-owns the local mountaineering shop. After a prickly start, they develop a bond, one with moments of prickliness but with even more warm humour. It’s touching and affecting and Guthrie, with his heart of gold, is a perfect foil for Hancock.
The beauty of Scottish landscape is a gift to cinematographer August Jakobson, but he also has to convey its bleak, unforgiving nature and the challenges it presents Edie – the isolation in particular. And he delivers, giving us both expansive panoramas, often seen from the air, and moments which are more up close and personal. The music veers towards the overwrought at times, especially as the film reaches its climax, but that’s a small point and it doesn’t detract from the emotional power of its final scenes.
But Edie has a bigger problem. Who is going to watch it? Its distribution is decent enough, but there are no big names in the case and the premise doesn’t exactly bowl you over. It may have been well received on the festival circuit, but it needs all the support it can get to make an impact at the box office. So spread the word and don’t let this well acted, compassionate film slip under the radar, even if you’re not exactly its target audience. And if you are, shout about it. It deserves it.
Edie review by Freda Cooper.
Edie is released in the UK on Friday, 25 March.
