Some may say it’s unwarranted to demand complete contextual translatability from cinema, even if it is the international medium par excellence. But isn’t its audio-visual nature what ensures worldwide circulation with minimal translation effort and maximum portability? Instead of prodding the dusty film theory books in search of definitions—what is global, world, or small-nation cinema — a more undeniably productive move would be to celebrate the differences that arthouse films today embody. After all, cinema is an endangered species. For example, it took indie hopeful Lance Hammer nearly two decades to make his sophomore feature, after winning quite a few awards with his Sundance-crowned debut “Ballast” in 2008.
With “Queen at Sea,” premiering in Competition at Berlinale, the LA-based writer-director gladly puts on the sash of “European cinema.” After the Mississippi-set “Ballast,” we find ourselves in North London, where the whiff of Victorian houses and the flickering lights of council flats scream social realism. None other than the chameleonic Juliette Binoche stars in the lead role with a script she helped develop — her and Hammer shared stories of dementia, bearing witness, and the intergenerational grief this neurodegenerative disease brings.
The little we learn about Amanda (Binoche) is peppered across the film’s runtime. Having left her tenured position in Newcastle for a sabbatical, she and her teenage daughter, Sara (“Bridgerton” star Florence Hunt), live in a council flat, uprooted, but close enough to keep an eye out on grandma Leslie (prolific film and TV British actress Anna Calder-Marshall), whose dementia is advancing. In a high-stakes opening scene, Amanda climbs the stairs to the top bedroom of her parents’ townhouse to find her stepfather, Martin (Tom Courtenay, as if plucked out of Andrew Haigh’s “45 Years”), on top of her mother. Those few seconds of dead silence as Leslie turns her terrified gaze towards her daughter paint a primal scene of sorts – what in infancy would have been the child’s perception of the sexual act as a violent act, is literally that. Amanda is convinced her mother cannot consent to sex and, therefore, Martin’s acts are nothing short of sexual assault.
“Queen at Sea”’s beginning is an ambiguous one: the less we know about these characters, the more we can guess. In fact, the film is at its strongest when it leans into that ambivalence, letting the protagonists work out their moral stance as they go. At first, Amanda and Martin are unshakeable, and so are their opposing views of what is good for Leslie; in a way, this is the film’s central conflict. Against this backdrop, Leslie’s lack of agency is glaring, and it’s mainly due to Calder-Marshall’s exquisite command of her body, the stasis and utter confusion radiating from her every move, that the audience can vest her with more autonomy than her family does.
Hammer’s script sustains the tension it builds with a spur-of-the-moment decision—Amanda calling the police on Martin—which triggers a cascade of complications as social workers are forced to intervene. It’s the institutions designed to safeguard that are suffocating, and this contradiction seems vital for “Queen at Sea.” However, the script had to be adapted to fit the UK healthcare system, as it was initially set in the United States, and it’s easy to see what the major differences would have been, as the sense of uncertainty in and distrust of public healthcare is not the same as that of private health. As a result, Hammer joins a long tradition of European dramas in which social realism goes hand in hand with institutional failure, not least those of Ken Loach.
For all the admiration Oscar-nominated cinematographer Adolpho Veloso (“Train Dreams”) has for Leslie and Martin’s townhouse, one might expect it to play a crucial part in this intergenerational story. But aside from its beautiful narrow staircase and sunlit kitchen, there is no palpable legacy. Hammer and Veloso are dedicated to real-life both in terms of locations, showing (in a geographically accurate way) areas of North London (Highgate, Tufnell Park, the Parkland Walk), and non-professional cast – the social workers, officers, and care home employees Amanda sees throughout the film are actual professions. Nobody can deny Hammer’s desire to keep close to the reality that is not his, and it’s both clever and respectful to make Amanda a newcomer to London, but something is missing.
Aside from obvious references like Michael Haneke’s “Amour” and Gaspar Noé’s “Vortex,” “Queen at Sea” benefits from Binoche’s star power and her undecipherable portrayal of prolonged grief. Between her, Calder-Marshall, and Hunt flows a special kind of energy, even if the three rarely get to share the screen. There’s a tenderness to their misunderstandings, and even when the distance between a teenager and her mother is at times comparable to that between a mother with dementia and her adult daughter, it’s touching nonetheless.
When it tries to tackle the bigger picture and the abstract notions of care and personhood, “Queen at Sea” falters, leaving the dialogue to (over)explain how everything is complicated and that there’s no right way to do it. One might see in that a suitable example of a film “doing” ethics and exploring the moral philosophy of what “good” care is. Still, it’s somewhat surprising to see Hammer’s long-awaited return fold into abstractions by the end, instead of doubling down on the ambivalences it set up in the beginning. [C]
