Eternal Beauty

Based upon the trailer and the streaming service's short description, I dove into this flick expecting another charming and playfully dry independent production that contained much British Isles eccentricity, as I am very fond of such works. What this film soon emerged as is a knuckleball; the baseball pitch that (if thrown right) initially looks like it will be easy to catch but then starts darting, drifting and diving all around, making the pitch very challenging to track and catch. This is a heavy film, but that's a very good thing. Psychosis appears to be effectively captured - uncertainty about what is a delusion and what is reality as well as a strong non-linearity. This makes the film, like a knuckleball, challenging to track. This flick is a challenge that only a certain portion of the populace will want to undertake, but for those who do, it will provide much to ponder regarding psychoses and will linger in your stream of consciousness.

I am pleased that I encountered this work. Hopefully you will be, too.

A Sally Hawkins performance is always so enthralling. Her latest role, in Craig Roberts's dark comedy, sees her play Jane a woman living with paranoid schizophrenia. There's a stark sense of isolation here - scenes take place in rooms that are half-empty, but filled with long, hungry shadows.

It has light, funny moments. When Jane falls for Mike (David Thewlis), someone also chewed up and spat out by the mental health system, they become frolicking lovers in a French New Wave classic. However, the movie is never unfaithful to the psychological reality of its central character.

Eternal Beauty shows, we might not be able to conquer our demons, but we can try to live with them. This is a nuanced, evolved take on mental illness than most films are capable of.

The abstractions of mental illness presented in a truly original way with jaw dropping performances by all the cast but an out of this world portrayal of the tortured Jane by Sally Hawkins.

My Review- Eternal Beauty on Prime My Rating- 8/10 I finally got to catch up with Sally Hawkins latest film "Eternal Beauty" and I wasn't disappointed. Sally Hawkins never disappoints me her sensitivity and empathy with broken human souls is extraordinary.

The character Sally Hawkins plays is Jane who, after being left at the altar, has a breakdown spiralling into a chaotic episode of schizophrenia lasting twenty years .

We see the characters in Jane's life (both real and imagined) through Jane's perspective when she's on her medication and when she's not. This provides some very humorous moments and some very confronting moments. At times the phrase came to my mind "Normal is just a cycle on a washing machine " because at times Jane seems much more sane than her very dysfunctional family.

Jane's distant disturbed mother Vivian played superbly by Penelope Wilton in a role so far removed from her Downton Abbey role of Isobel Merton is centre stage as the family relationships collide.

One of the most humorous Christmas family gathering scenes I've seen in years is when Jane triumphs over her two ugly Sisters (inner not outer ugliness Nicole (Billie Piper) and Lucy ( Rita Bernard-Shaw) and the other when said sisters ask Jane to help them act mental to fraudulently claim disability benefits.

Things change for Jane when she begins a darkly comic romance with Mike (David Thewlis), a failed musician and fellow lost soul.

'Eternal Beauty' was not the film's original title. At first it was going to be In Her Oils. This is first seen as the title of a picture hanging in the psychiatrist's office. The picture appears several more times, in different locations - Alice's dining room, the doctor's waiting room, etc. The phrase is also spoken by different characters over the course of the film. The phrase ' to be in one's oils' means to be in one's element and is derived from the Welsh expression, 'Yn ei hwyliau', which literally translates (according to Google Translate) as 'in her mood'.

Eternal Beauty beautifully written and directed by Craig Robert's could be very confronting for some people who have members of their family or friends with mental illness.

I'm so glad films like this are made because hopefully audiences can identify and gain empathy with people experiencing acute mental illness and see the Happy , Glad, Mad and Sad side of life through their eyes.

Great acting, believable portrayal of dysfunctional family with varying degrees of mental health issues, rescuers & villains. Thought the cinematography was well so done, colors were faded & cloudy when she was medicated, sights & sounds were harsher when she was more symptomatic. One reviewer gave praise that the strong cast " keeps the comedy buoyant throughout." Comedy?! Buoyant?! 2 words that do not come near my mind when describing this movie. Tragedy, betrayal & pitting family members against each other, not funny or buoyant, everyone is depressed, psychotic &/ or has a personality disorder & is terrible, manipulative, cruel to her. Also the story line wove this thread of purpose throughout, that she was failing because she didn't know her purpose, obviously not the case & was more complicated, but her mother said on her deathbed do you know your purpose? ( have you figured it out yet?) end scene, 20 minutes of the movie left & it's never mentioned again... sloppy script writing.