We cannot fully prepare for the future. This is a truth that Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea illustrates in honest, uncomfortable detail. It’s been 18 years since Hammer’s acclaimed debut Ballast (2008), but thankfully time has not shifted his thematic concerns. Like Ballast, Queen at Sea sees a small group of people confront thorny dilemmas that they never could have imagined having to face.
Queen at Sea opens with Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall) and Martin (Tom Courtenay) taking a walk in the park. The autumnal setting reflects their encroaching years, as cinematographer Adolpho Veloso encases them and the city of London in a perennial rainfall that never actually falls. They do their best to function, even while dealing with Leslie’s dementia. Their frailty is a cause for concern, as they often find themselves climbing stairways and confronting all kinds of infrastructure that doesn’t readily cater to them. However, this is only the beginning, as their interactions with the systems in place take on a new and more difficult form.
Leslie’s daughter Amanda (Juliette Binoche) and granddaughter Sara (Florence Hunt) arrive at the couple’s home one morning to find them having sex. Amanda is horrified and calls the police on Martin for taking advantage of a person unable to give consent. Meanwhile, Martin maintains his innocence, claiming Leslie desires and initiates the act. Before anyone in the film or the audience can come to any conclusions, police and trauma staff are in the house to figure out what happened. It’s a nightmarish situation, the tight corridors of the couple’s home suddently swarming with bodies and fear.
At the core of Queen at Sea lie ethical dilemmas that most people would never even consider. Even at a time when ideas about consent are more widely communicated, Queen at Sea finds new ways to explore what consent actually entails. As part of the police investigation, Amanda brings Leslie to a treatment centre to be examined for signs of abuse, a process that arguably dehumanises the older woman more than she already has been. Calder-Marshall is heartbreakingly vulnerable as the demented Leslie; as she gets caught in the middle of debates in which she can’t take part, her mild eyes plead for calm in the midst of the storm.
Indeed, a great deal is taking place around poor Leslie that she can’t possibly fathom. While the police continue their enquiries, Amanda and Martin debate Leslie’s care, and whether she can remain at home. Like Calder-Marshall, Courtenay brings decades of experience to Martin’s lived-in and worn-down physique. He strives to maintain his and Leslie’s dignity while external forces do exactly the opposite. We tend to freeze family members into prescribed roles, so to see their sexualities and vulnerabilities laid bare is necessarily fraught with upset. Hammer’s script captures virtually every road block that could arise when attempting to secure a loved one with an illness like dementia. As Leslie’s family look for a solution, everybody gets forced into compromises that upend their lives, and Queen at Sea makes no bones about this reality.
Lest this all sound heavy, which it undoubtedly is, Sara’s storyline acts as a valuable reminder that life carries on beyond the boundaries of any one story. Hunt is a likeable presence as the teenager, going off on her own journey into friends, love and finding her way while her mother and grandparents agonise away. At first, her journey appears tangential to the main story, but as time goes on her life becomes a relief from the heartbreaking drama gripping her elders. The fact that life exists beyond family tragedy is a cruelty that everyone must accept at one time or another.
Holding these strands and the film together is Binoche, delivering another marvellous portrait of a capable person confronted by a world contorting against her best intentions. Like Binoche’s performances in Three Colours Blue (1993) or Code Unknown (2000), Amanda is a woman caught in her roles as daughter, stepdaughter, mother, professional, and trying to do the right thing while struggling to keep everyone happy. Her best intentions threaten to drive a wedge between her family members, and even potentially endanger them. Binoche ensures that Amanda never loses sympathy, even when her decisions only offer more complications.
At its best, Queen at Sea is comparable to the works of Binoche’s frequent collaborator Michael Haneke, exploring the fragile borders between good judgement and bad behaviour. It can’t promise an uplifting message, and its register throughout is one of honesty rather than placation. Every sufferer and carer is a flawed human being, with their best and worst attributes laid bare in situations of such emotional potency. With the ongoing increase in cases of degenerative illness, Queen at Sea is a necessary reminder that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to caregiving, or to living.
Queen at Sea is in cinemas from 18 September.
