Julianne Moore won a well-deserved Academy Award for her performance in 2014’s Still Alice, as a linguistics professor doing her best to cope with a slide into Alzheimer’s.
Jessica Lange deserves the same reward, for her richly nuanced work in this film.
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| Edith (Kathy Bataes, left) loses her patience — but not her compassion — when longtime best friend Lillian (Jessica Lange) refuses to believe that anything is truly wrong with her. |
...to the almost total exclusion of her adult daughter, to that poor woman’s dismay. But that’s getting ahead of things.
Scripter Elisabeth Seldes Annacone was inspired by her aunt, Tony Award-winning stage and film actress Marian Hall Seldes, whose busy career included every one of the 1,809 performances of Ira Levin’s play Deathtrap, which earned her mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. She worked tirelessly until 2011, at which point — sadly — she spiraled into dementia during the final three years of her life.
Annacone’s sensitive script is handled with assurance by director Michael Cristofer, best known for theater works that include his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Shadow Box. His approach here feels very much like a stage play, which focuses on the crucial few days when veteran stage actress Lillian Hall (Lange) — proud of the fact that she’s never missed a performance during her long and celebrated career — realizes that she no longer can conceal her worsening condition from the world.
Or from herself.
Annacone and Cristofer split their narrative into three parallel elements: rehearsals of Lillia ‘s next starring role, in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard; intimate glimpses of her personal life, whether alone at home or in the company of family and colleagues; and B&W “interview footage” of various individuals filmed for the electronic press kit that’ll accompany the play’s opening.
On stage, it becomes increasing clear that Lillian has trouble remembering her lines, to the dismay of play director David Flemming (Jesse Williams). He has long admired her, and has been making allowances ... and excuses to the other cast members.
Producer Jane Stone (Cindy Hogan) is more pragmatic; she’s horrified by the possibility that the star who attracted this production’s financial backers, may prove incapable of making it to opening night.
