Miss You Already

An amazing cast elevates a very predictable story. I have to admit, I expected a little bit more than what this ended up being. Treacle galore but the performances are wonderful.

This is the archetypal woman's film - but there's nothing wrong with that, with far too few opportunities for women in the key roles in movie-making. So women fill the slots of scriptwriter (the British Morwenna Banks), director (American Catherine Hardwicke) and the two top acting positions (Australian Toni Collette and American Drew Barrymore).

And the subject material is feminine too: breast cancer, infertility, and female friendship. Like "The Fault In Our Stars", this is a frank exposition of what it is like to suffer cancer - in this case, with chemotherapy and its attendant sickness, tiredness and hair loss followed by headaches, vision loss, and pain.

It sounds tough and it is - one the saddest film I've seen in a long while - but there is humour and warmth and superior acting which make it worth viewing this real slice of life. After all, most of us of a certain age have had relatives or friends who have suffered one form of cancer or another, some surviving, some not.

Jess (Drew Barrymore) and Milly (Toni Collette) are lifelong friends from childhood. Jess was an American girl fish-out-of-water in England and Milly was the only one who befriended her. Milly's mother Miranda (Jacqueline Bisset) is an often-absent flaky actress. The girls did everything together. Milly has famed rocker husband Kit (Dominic Cooper), a high powered job, and two kids. Jess lives on a boat with Jago (Paddy Considine) desperately trying to get pregnant. The couple's money is drained and Jago has to work on a North Sea oil rig. Then Milly is diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer.

This is solid female friendship material. The breast cancer story has its melodramatic touches but it doesn't go overboard. There are enough surprises to keep it fresh. Director Catherine Hardwicke could have made this tighter. Through it all, Barrymore and Collette create a believable best friends duo. Collette especially shines. In the pantheon of female best friends with cancer, this is one of the better ones.

Interesting to see that another reviewer compared this to 50/50. In many regards that is, one of them being that 50/50 does seem to get the recognition it deserves (even only in small degrees). Another interesting this is the German title for this movie: In heaven everyone is wearing high heels. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

Overall the movie is pretty engaging and the main actresses have a good chemistry together. For the subject matter it is kept pretty light, which you'll either appreciate or hate. Judging from the rating more people are on the love side. That doesn't mean it's always easy to watch and some may say this could've been a TV drama of the week kind of thing. But that would be unfair to the people involved, all of whom are doing a good job here.

This is not like one of those you have already seen cancer themed film, there's two main characters and their two sets of struggles. They both are very close friends since childhood. When they grow up, one settles down comfortably in life, but fall seriously ill and another one struggles to build a family.

I think the film's strength was the development in every scene without wasting a bit. There's always something happens that keeps us alive. I expected the usual, but it gave me a different entertainment. In the movie everything was between two friends, even each had their own family to care about, this story concentrated what came between them and how they fought together.

Great direction, shot in wonderful places, but the actors were decent. They should have been better, especially Toni Collette. To me the sentiments were very weak knowing the theme belong to the tearjerkers. Initially you might think it is a female version of '50/50', almost it was, but tried to be a different with additional story expansion. Overall a good movie, little fun to watch, you might enjoy it, but I can't guarantee.

7/10