\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he first time we see Martin and Leslie, the elderly couple at the centre of Lance Hammer\u2019s wrenching new film, Queen at Sea, they are walking together up a set of stone steps: one of their regular outings, we assume, in days filled with pottering and quiet companionship. They have their backs to us, and we can\u2019t see their destination beyond a bleached sky that fills the top half of the screen. Symbolically, it may be deemed a bit on the nose: two people near the end of their lives, moving gently towards the white light of oblivion. There\u2019s a whiff of sentimentality about it.<\/p>\n But any doubts about this story\u2019s willingness to confront difficult truths are blasted away by the next scene. Leslie\u2019s daughter, Amanda, played by Juliette Binoche, pays a visit to the couple\u2019s house in drizzly, middle-class north London, her teenage daughter in tow. Unable to find her mother and stepfather, she arrives at the bedroom door. Opening it, she finds Martin (Tom Courtenay) on top of Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), who lies impassively beneath him, the mask of dementia obvious on her face.<\/p>\n Mortified and angry \u2013 she\u2019s told him before that their sexual relationship should stop \u2013 Amanda calls the police, unleashing a series of upheavals that make for often excruciating viewing. No one in their right mind would countenance the possibility of ongoing, nonconsensual sex. But neither would anyone look approvingly on the cold, hard edge of officialdom as it slices through the family\u2019s status quo, leaving Leslie confused and frightened. As we see her disoriented by physical separation from her partner and learn more about their relationship, the audience is forced to hover between two contradictory perspectives. It\u2019s a deeply uncomfortable experience.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ambiguity, however painful, is exactly what the film\u2019s director was aiming for. \u201cWe weren\u2019t trying to convey a moral position,\u201d says Hammer. \u201cWe were trying to say that this is a story with a lot of confusing parts, and we want you to experience it and come to your own conclusions.\u201d Hammer is briefly in London on his way to the Edinburgh International film festival, having landed from LA the night before, and we meet in the mercifully cool Curzon offices on one of the hottest days of the year. The 59-year-old, who trained as an architect and had a career as an art director on big-budget movies, is thoughtful and reserved (\u201cit\u2019s very alien to me\u201d, he says of the process of promoting the film, his first in 18 years), but he\u2019s adamant that the narrative shouldn\u2019t come down clearly on either side. \u201cI just don\u2019t think that\u2019s my role as an artist. My job is to question things, to present something that\u2019s complicated and let the viewer consider it more deeply than they would have.\u201d<\/p>\n He does, however, have strong personal feelings about the central dilemma: \u201cI think Amanda\u2019s absolutely right to bring in the institutions. But she doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s getting into, because how can you?\u201d Has Martin committed a crime, in his view? \u201cMartin loves Leslie, and he\u2019s a human being so maybe he\u2019s living in denial, or he hasn\u2019t been able to see the steps of erosion [of her mental capacity] because he\u2019s so in it. You know, it\u2019s like boiling a frog; he may not fully understand the peril she\u2019s in, and what consent means any more. He\u2019s just operating the way they always have their whole life, and they\u2019ve loved each other deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Courtenay and Calder-Marshall jointly accept the Silver Bear for best supporting performance at the Berlinale film festival. <\/span> Photograph: Ralf Hirschberger\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n That love is powerfully expressed in Courtenay and Calder-Marshall\u2019s remarkable performances, for which they joint-won a Silver Bear at this year\u2019s Berlinale film festival: her portrayal of the particular bewilderment of dementia will be recognisable to anyone who has seen it in a loved one. Their own bond lends emotional depth to the dynamic \u2013 this is the first time they\u2019ve worked with one another since playing Hamlet and Ophelia in 1968. Though they had fallen out of contact for decades, \u201ctheir souls are entwined in some way\u201d, Hammer says, and it seems real rather than mawkish. \u201cWhen I was casting Annie, I had a list of people I didn\u2019t know, so I asked Tom because he\u2019s worked with everybody. When he got to Annie\u2019s name, he said: \u2018Annie! It has to be Annie. Cast her right now.\u2019\u201d Together, they convey an intimacy borne of a bone-deep understanding, which extends to even minute gestures and changes in expression.<\/p>\n The difficulty comes as that understanding begins to crumble, unevenly and unpredictably. \u201cIf there\u2019s any chance at all that you could be putting her in danger and she can\u2019t communicate it, then you just have to stop the action,\u201d says Hammer. But as the fallout from Martin\u2019s behaviour and Amanda\u2019s call continues, the characters grapple with a cascade of problems: whether or not to place Leslie in a care home, how to protect her once she\u2019s there, whether to sell houses, change jobs, upend their lives. These are choices many will recognise from first-hand experience, but not, strangely enough, Hammer. Neither of his parents have dementia. \u201cThis isn\u2019t from my own life,\u201d he said in an interview earlier this year. \u201cIt\u2019s just a moral dilemma that riveted me.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Communication breakdown \u2026 Juliette Binoche and Courtenay. <\/span> Photograph: \u00a9 Seafaring LLC<\/p>\n That\u2019s not the case with Binoche. On the phone from Paris, where she\u2019s shooting a film with Turkish director Berkun Oya, she tells me she has a parent with \u201ca sort of dementia, not exactly Alzheimer\u2019s\u201d, and has herself been trapped in the classic pincer movement between the demands of one generation and another. \u201cI remember one time I stood up in the middle of the night thinking: how am I going to deal with this?\u201d she says. \u201cOne is going to the tomb, and the other one is [experiencing] all the teenage needs, feelings and emotions. I felt caught in a situation I had no control of.<\/p>\n \u201cI admire people who stop everything and take care of their parents if they can. The thing is, usually we cannot because we\u2019ve got to work, we have kids, we\u2019ve got to run, and so we\u2019re taken aback by the changing needs of older people. Suddenly, you realise you\u2019ve got to submit yourself to a system that is not made for human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n Binoche\u2019s view of the sexual question at the heart of the film is also subtly different from Hammer\u2019s. \u201cI mean, Lance answers yes: it was wrong. You know, he\u2019s very clear about that. Me personally, it\u2019s very difficult because you feel they\u2019re a couple, and also because she initiates those needs.\u201d (Later in the film, we discover that Leslie often solicits sexual contact.) \u201cI would say, like Lance, you have to protect somebody who\u2019s not fully himself or herself. At the same time, you wonder [about it]. And that\u2019s what the film is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n So what does the law actually say? In England and Wales, the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 makes sexual activity illegal if someone is \u201cunable to refuse because of or for a reason related to a mental disorder\u201d \u2013 which includes dementia \u2013 and if the healthy partner could be expected to know this. The capacity to choose whether to agree to sex can ebb and flow in someone with dementia \u2013 a diagnosis doesn\u2019t by itself mean they cannot consent, and guidance suggests that the consent doesn\u2019t have to be verbal. According to Dementia UK: \u201cIf the person living with dementia responds positively and with obvious enjoyment when their partner makes sexual advances, there is every reason to believe they are consenting to sex. Alternatively, if their responsiveness, enjoyment or willingness diminishes, this could be an indication that they do not consent to sex, and this should be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n All of which is easy enough to put down in writing, but seems impossibly difficult to adjudicate in practice. And while Alex Ruck Keene, a barrister specialising in mental capacity, agrees that dementia doesn\u2019t automatically mean sex can\u2019t be consensual, \u201cif you simply don\u2019t have the ability to understand what a sexual act is, then it\u2019s completely irrelevant that you appear to be enjoying it\u201d.<\/p>\n He continues: \u201cFor a long period of time it has been recognised that the law is really not satisfactory, because you\u2019ve got two totally competing policy objectives. One is: consent must mean consent. I mean, we fought for that for years.\u201d The other is to avoid interfering in lawful sexual expression. In the kind of case presented in the film, \u201cif it doesn\u2019t appear to be that the husband is taking advantage of the wife, if it appears to be mutually pleasurable with no power imbalance, it feels weird to then say: \u2018Well, the husband\u2019s doing something wrong.\u2019\u201d In practice, where there is a complaint by a family member, the police may find it impossible to gather reliable evidence of an offence, making prosecution difficult. A local authority may, however, determine that safeguards \u2013 for example, stopping unsupervised contact \u2013 need to be put in place.<\/p>\n <\/span>Lance Hammer accepts the Silver Bear jury prize at this year\u2019s Berlinale film festival. <\/span> Photograph: Arturo Holmes\/Getty Images<\/p>\n For Hammer, getting the procedural stuff right was vital, but the process was thrown into confusion when funding fell through, and a movie originally set in the US had to be reworked for Europe. \u201cI researched it for a US scenario,\u201d he says. \u201cBut when we got to the UK, the institutional response is different.\u201d He leaned heavily on experts to help fine-tune the script \u2013 so much so that some ended up acting in the film. \u201cThey were brought on as consultants for research, and so I talked through the scenes with them. We\u2019d sit down in the workshop space and say: \u2018OK, here\u2019s the way the scene\u2019s written. Is this accurate?\u2019 And they\u2019d say: \u2018No, it would be like this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He was particularly keen to capture the officialese used by police, sexual assault referral centre staff and social workers, and which marks such a stark contrast with the family environment. \u201cI wanted their language,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a very specific idiom and so I needed that from them, because I can\u2019t write it. I also knew I secretly wanted to cast them if they seemed like they could do it, and so I did.\u201d Marie-Elle Vooijs plays a sexual assault clinician, her real job; likewise social worker Jean Pemberton. \u201cIt took a little persuading, but they all wanted to [play these roles] in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Upending \u2026 Juliette Binoche and Anna Calder-Marshall. <\/span> Photograph: \u00a9 Seafaring LLC<\/p>\n For Hammer, making Queen at Sea \u2013 for which he won the 2026 Berlinale\u2019s Silver Bear jury prize \u2013 has been a long, slow process, but one he felt compelled to see through. This is his first film since 2008, when his debut, Ballast, won the directing award at Sundance. Why has there been such a huge gap between projects? (He tells me he\u2019s supported himself in the meantime by making investments and doing the occasional architectural project.) \u201cIt was just hard to find films to make that I cared about, and that I can also make a living doing. I stopped because it was not possible.\u201d Does he have any qualms about returning with such a painful story? \u201cWhen this subject came up, I realised it was dark and bleak, but there\u2019s meaning in it because a lot of people are experiencing this.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s an understatement to say that the end of the film doesn\u2019t offer audiences much in the way of solace. But Hammer is unapologetic. \u201cWhen you make a choice to pursue a subject, you\u2019re limited by it, and this is the subject. I didn\u2019t want to make it sentimental and heartwarming because that\u2019s not truthful, and with a lot of films about dementia that\u2019s the tactic,\u201d he says. \u201cSo then the question is: can I make the most truthful thing that\u2019s possible, and with the most beauty, the beauty [coming from] true loving relationships and compassion for the characters? That\u2019s the goal. If you can manage that, you can make a film that\u2019s maybe worth watching.\u201d<\/p>\n Queen at Sea is released in the UK on 18 September, and in the US on 30 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first time we see Martin and Leslie, the elderly couple at the centre of Lance Hammer\u2019s wrenching new film, Queen at Sea, they are walking together up a set of stone steps: one of their regular outings, we assume, in days filled with pottering and quiet companionship. They have their backs to us, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[6626,2222,4132,23523,1394,1850,464,4113,2120,11582],"class_list":{"0":"post-52101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-dementia","9":"tag-drama","10":"tag-enjoying","11":"tag-irrelevant","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-queen","14":"tag-sea","15":"tag-sex","16":"tag-understand","17":"tag-upended"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}