Craig Roberts (director)
(studio)
15 (certificate)
94 (length)
02 October 2020 (released)
28 September 2020
There are those who'll claim they know what you are thinking. Which is palpable rubbish: People and their minds are too complex to be worked out by some observations and conversations, no matter how long anyone as known has each other, or been studied. It becomes more pointless still when a mind is not operating in what could be described as a normal way. As much maligned as that word is, it does still have a use and is a useful barometer. Writer and director Craig Roberts with Eternal Beauty doesn't try to analyse the mind more try to show that while it may not be perceived to be functioning on one level, it is at another and is of no less value in society for that.
Jane (Sally Hawkins) lives on her own and for a good proportion of her life has had to deal with paranoid schizophrenia whether through therapy and/or drugs. She copes but it is a strain on her family too. Doubly difficult as they are estranged Alice (Alice Lowe) is no longer talking to her mother while younger sibling Nicola (Billie Piper) flirts with delinquency and criminality.
Jane’s life is fairly routine but punctuated with memories of when she was dumped at the altar – her younger self played by Morfydd Clark – and plagued with voices and visions. She tries to function as far as possible independently but there are lapses when she doesn’t take her medication allowing the voices and bad memories to become more intense.
Into her life comes Mike (David Thewlis) who has his own problems and claims to know her. Mike is a musician of no fixed abode but he has a certain charm that Jane latches onto though his motives are questioned by Alice at family meal during which Nicola announces her engagement and marriage to a much older man, which spurs Mike in to an off the cuff decision. Robert’s allows space for some contentment (and comedy) here but cruelly dashes it away.
Eternal Beauty is an acting masterclass from a cast at the top of their game. Hawkins has the spotlight with the most complicated role as a person who is incredibly vulnerable though at times very manipulative demonstrated by small facial tics and hand gestures in conversations, just to emphasis a point or distract from actions that she knows were wrong.
However the rest of the cast are on a par. Alice Rowe as the concerned sister who is exasperated by Jane’s actions; Piper the younger manipulative sibling in for herself, full well knowing the results of her actions; Thewlis as Mike who comes into the film almost as a comic relief with his dreadful music and travelling minstrel attitude. Penelope Wilton as the strict matriarch self-centred in her beliefs who if not sows the seeds of Jane’s problems certainly contributed. And then Morfydd Clark whose role is small but crucial to understanding older Jane’s condition.
The film is full of metaphor as Jane sees her younger self trapped in a room through a hole in the wall, which she fills in. It’s also highly detailed with Jane’s dishevelled hair, ‘you should wash…’ Nicola tells her a one point and her ill-fitting shoes all combing to create a rounded and sympathetic character. These details signal a mind that is constantly in turmoil yet capable of unconventional logical thought as when she buys her own Christmas presents, for the family to then give to her (as the ones she usually receives from them are rubbish) and then charges them for the goods. Craig Roberts’s skill is a light-heartedness he’s threaded through the film that doesn’t ridicule Jane’s illness but casts it in another light.
Eternal Beauty will be released in cinemas and be on demand from 2 October.