If the American health care system doesn’t already make you nervous, watching this film will leave you hiding in a closet, whimpering like a child.
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| After Amy (Jessica Chastain) suffers a minor cardiomyopathy attack, Charlie (Eddie Redmayne) talks her down from panic. |
It can be argued — and this clearly is the point of director Tobias Lindholm’s slow-burn film — that this system is the bigger villain.
But such awareness arrives later. Our attention is drawn initially to Jessica Chastain’s richly nuanced, quietly compelling performance as Amy Loughren, a dedicated nurse in a large East Coast hospital. She’s the single mother of two young daughters — Maya (Devyn McDowell) and Alex (Alix West Lefler) — and works long hours during demanding ICU night shifts.
Amy also suffers from cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart condition that manifests when her pulse rate spirals out of control. It requires surgical intervention, which she cannot yet afford; because she’s relatively new to this hospital placement, she’s still months away from the one-year vesting that’ll allow health insurance to kick in.
(The irony is not lost on us: a nurse, working at a hospital, who remain uninsured.)
Chastain’s slumped posture and frequently weary expression suggest a woman constantly battling total exhaustion. And yet Amy also radiates dignity and responsibility; she always lights up when with a patient, or comforting a family member; her ministrations are gentle, her compassion palpable.
She isn’t merely a “good” nurse; she’s a great nurse. Chastain delivers one of those “all in” performances that makes her every move and spoken word compelling, and authentic. She feels like somebody living next door.
We meet Amy as she tends to an elderly woman with a serious skin condition: uncomfortable and debilitating, but not life-threatening. Lindholm and Wilson-Cairns take their time in establishing Amy’s routine: both during her overworked and understaffed hospital shifts, and at home, where Maya has become frustrated by her mother’s prolonged daily absences.
Relief finally arrives when Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) joins her unit. Amy shows him the ropes; he adapts quickly to this late-night shift’s demands. Redmayne makes him affable, observant and — most particularly — empathetic. Amy and Charlie bond during these long nights; she trusts him with her heart issues, and he becomes something of a cheerleader.
And also a friend, spending daytime hours with Amy and her daughters, who adore him.
Then the elderly woman dies, quite unexpectedly.
