{"id":296256,"date":"2026-02-17T21:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T21:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/296256\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T21:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T21:10:07","slug":"juliette-binoche-in-singular-dementia-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/296256\/","title":{"rendered":"Juliette Binoche in Singular Dementia Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRevolving around three generations of women \u2014 played by Anna Calder-Marshall, Juliette Binoche<\/a> and Florence Hunt \u2014 within one troubled family, Berlinale competitor Queen at Sea offers a scathingly unsentimental look at the complexity of caring for an elderly person with dementia. <\/p>\n

\n\tShot in London, this scrupulously realist work by multi-hyphenate Lance Hammer (his first directorial effort since 2008\u2019s Ballast<\/a>) reportedly evolved out of intensive rehearsals and input from social services and policing experts who, in some cases, play fictionalized versions of themselves. That commitment to both technical and emotional veracity pays dividends all round, creating a work that\u2019s not exactly fun to watch but one that feels sincere, urgent and unflinchingly honest.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tQueen at Sea\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tSometimes love is not enough.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, Anna Calder-Marshall, Florence Hunt
Director\/screenwriter: Lance Hammer
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 56 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough Hammer is an American, he\u2019s either picked up or been well-advised by cast and crew about the nuances of British life in the capital because so many of the details here feel precisely, thoughtfully calibrated. That goes for the set dressing in the elderly couple\u2019s north London townhouse in Tufnell Park (exactly the sort of address the couple would have been able to afford years ago that\u2019s now worth a gazillion times what they paid), the kind of puffer jackets the teenage daughter and her friends would wear, and the slang they\u2019d use. (My only quibble is that Englishwoman Leslie, the character played by Calder-Marshall, would far more likely spell her name \u201cLesley,\u201d because Brits consider \u201cLeslie\u201d to be the \u201cman\u2019s way\u201d to spell that name. Ask me how I know.)<\/p>\n

\n\tOtherwise, everything here rings true as a newly cast church bell, right from the plunge-right-into-it opening scene. This finds Amanda (Binoche, immaculately natural as always) letting herself and her teen daughter Sara (Hunt, a Bridgerton veteran holding her own with ease) into the home of her mother Leslie and stepfather Martin (British national treasure Tom Courtenay<\/a>). Not hearing a reply when she drops off the groceries downstairs, she goes up to check on them in the bedroom and catches them in flagrante delicto. <\/p>\n

\n\tAmanda\u2019s reaction is not so much shock as anger, like this has happened before, and she angrily tells Martin off for having sex with his wife; in Amanda\u2019s opinion, and that of the family\u2019s general practitioner, Leslie\u2019s dementia is bad enough that she can\u2019t be considered capable of giving full consent to marital relations, no matter how much she seems to be the one who initiates intimacy. Martin, on the other hand, insists that not all \u201cexperts\u201d agree that dementia patients are incapable of consent, an impression he\u2019s clearly gleaned from that debatable fount of knowledge, Google.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is all explained through Amanda and Martin\u2019s arguments, shown sometimes fully in shot and sometimes just heard from another room as the camera sits motionless on the stairs like someone (Leslie or Sara, perhaps?) listening in and looking on from a distance. Furious and hoping to give Martin a good enough scare to teach him a lesson, Amanda calls the police and uniformed officers show up and arrest Martin, much to his and Amanda\u2019s distress. Later, special police liaison Emma (Michelle Jeram, a real-life sexual offenses investigator for the police) shows up and takes over the investigation, which leads to Leslie going to the hospital for a rape-kit assessment (performed by another real-life professional), which only distresses Leslie, and on it goes.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom that phone call, a small, arguably well-intentioned if passive-aggressive act of do-goodery on Amanda\u2019s part, a whole series of unfortunate consequences cascade down upon the family. For starters, Leslie is hastily placed in a local care home, but that too goes horribly wrong. With nowhere else to go, Martin ends up coming back to his and Leslie\u2019s house, even though he\u2019s not supposed to be there. But it\u2019s soon obvious to both him and Amanda that he\u2019s much more adept at looking after Leslie\u2019s needs when it comes to getting her to eat, bathe and go to sleep.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, it\u2019s not as if Amanda wants to be the one to lay down the law. An academic with a fully tenured position at a university in Newcastle up north, she\u2019s taken a sabbatical in London at a rented flat in a typically grotty-looking British high-rise so she can try to persuade Martin to put Leslie in a home. Although separated from Sara\u2019s father, whom we never see, it\u2019s clear from a phone call (that we only hear one side of) that she has a pretty good relationship with her ex. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut things have gone irretrievably wrong there, too, perhaps mirroring what went on years ago in Leslie\u2019s own marriage to Amanda\u2019s (presumably French) father. The script subtly contemplates how dysfunction passes down through generations \u2014 or, to quote the great British poet Philip Larkin\u2019s most infamous poem, \u201cThis Be the Verse\u201d: \u201cThey fuck you up, your mum and dad.\/They may not mean to, but they do.\/They fill you with the faults they had\/And add some extra, just for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLarkin goes on to liken the familial destruction to a coastal shelf, deepening with every generation, and Sara also takes her first steps into this abyss. Left alone to make her way to school, she decides to have sex with local boy James (Cody Molko) after just a few sessions of vibing and hanging out together. As it happens, like Martin, James seems like a really nice guy, a bit gormless and willing to put himself at the disposal of this young woman\u2019s strong sexual urges. At one point, someone says the line \u201cit\u2019s not desire, it\u2019s fear,\u201d and the film quickly edits in a fleeting shot of an urban fox trotting through an overgrown London cemetery. The moment is never contextualized or explained, but perfectly pulls together Queen\u2018s unique blend of animality, hunger, lust, death and picturesque urban decay.<\/p>\n

\n\tSimilarly, the older actors unabashedly show off their aging, sagging, beautifully wrinkled bodies, well-loved vessels that can give pleasure and also betray their inhabitants. It\u2019s an extraordinary, painterly duet from Courtenay and Calder-Marshall, two actors who\u2019ve known each other for half a century as friends; that familiarity shines through throughout. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe finale of the movie kicks this all up a gear as bodily fluids start to leak out, laying waste to the family\u2019s rational arguments and well-laid plans. Observed in a creamy, wintery, stark daylight designed by DP Adolpho Veloso (Train Dreams<\/a>), the end is all kinds of bleak, and everything that anyone who has had to look after a disabled relative might have feared. But isn\u2019t it better to look at this straight-on, no flinching, no forgiving, no apologies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Revolving around three generations of women \u2014 played by Anna Calder-Marshall, Juliette Binoche and Florence Hunt \u2014 within…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[138345,147642,146946,146,85,399,46,25203,397,150165],"class_list":{"0":"post-296256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-berlin-2026","9":"tag-berlin-film-festival-reviews","10":"tag-berlin-international-film-festival","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-international","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-juliette-binoche","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-tom-courtenay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}