I am not into romantic dramas unless it centers a seasoned, long term, committed, loving couple so when I saw the preview for Ordinary Love, starring Phantom Thread’s Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson, a man who won’t let us love him and usually says something inflammatory while promoting his films, but also a widow who lost his luminous and talented wife, Natasha Richardson, in a tragic ski accident, I was locked and loaded. With the bonus of tackling such real life issues as facing your mortality and fighting cancer, how could I stay away. I adore French movies because of their understated, organic way of depicting life and death issues so I was truly hoping that the wind blew a little of that artistry towards their neighbors across the channel. I was undeterred and actually spurred into action when I discovered that it would only be in theaters for a week.
Would you like the good or bad news? The great news is that Ordinary Love provides Manville and Neeson a superb opportunity to truly flex their acting muscle. They have plenty of chemistry and were believable as a married couple. The film is beautiful to watch, and the rhythm is quite soothing as we settle into a little under a year in the life of a married couple as the wife fights breast cancer. We get brief mature sexuality and nudity, which is rare to see in films which usually insult older audiences’ intelligence by treating them more like adolescents. The film also has a casual diversity with a same sex couple, which includes a South Asian British man, which is severely underrepresented in media.
Unfortunately Ordinary Love’s story screams Sunday night television movie. When I watch romantic dramas, I think of details, and unfortunately this film stretched my suspension of disbelief until it snapped. In real life, older people accumulate a lot of people along the way, especially if they have a certain level of education, had a career and got married. Otherwise who came to the wedding and purchased gifts off the registry? This couple is an island literally. If it was just figuratively, then it would be love, but they have no family, friends from school or work, neighbors, etc. They just have each other. Their closest acquaintance is someone from their past whom they bump into at the hospital.
Ordinary Love tries to explain away this phenomenon by casually mentioning an aspect of their past, which would explain some impulse to solitude, but not everything. I found that randomly dropped storyline to be a bit much, especially considering how reticent the film was about the details. It kind of verged on soap opera or melodrama, and not in a good way. I understand that it raised the stakes for Neesson’s character, but it felt like a cheap way to do it, especially when the film uses an implausible action by his character to finally share his inner thoughts to the audience while simultaneously admitting that he would never do that. The film should have trusted that Neeson could convey it without that particular setting or monologue.
Thank God that I do not have cancer, but I have sadly been close to many people who were diagnosed with cancer. Random people come out of the woodwork, and it is actually surprising how even the most tenuous bonds become urgently renewed when the spectre of death raises its head. I imagine that it can become annoying so Ordinary Love could have depicted the couple’s bond by spending more time showing them trying to politely discard these impulses so they could spend more time together.
Ordinary Love also makes the mistake of devoting the majority of the film to the mechanics of cancer treatment, which is important, but even people who fight cancer do not spend all their time fighting cancer. They have to find a compromise between living regularly and in survival mode. No one wants to be defined by their lowest point, and the film basically goes through a version of the stations of the cross with Manville. They walk, watch television, go grocery shopping and fight cancer. Those activities do not quite add up to a life. When they are not fighting cancer, how do they spend their day. If they are feeling really jazzy, they will go on a little trip. Are they retired? How are they able to be retired, go on vacation and renovate their house? What did they do before they retired? Who was their financial planner? Do you have that person’s number? I get that health insurance costs are not an issue for them, but London is still expensive. How do they make it financially work? I think that he was a lawyer.
I could be the problem, but I did wish that I watched Ordinary Love if only so I had subtitles to understand what Neeson was saying. He laid the accent on thick, and I am positive that I missed a ton of dialogue. If you are really sensitive to animal death, maybe skip this movie. It was the second time today that I witnessed the fictional death of not one, but two goldfish. I am more sensitive to animal death than the average viewer, and I am sure that the filmmakers chose a goldfish because it would be the least controversial living being to kill without sparking the ire of your audience, but it did not work. Seriously, it was my second goldfish death, but at least it was by natural causes, not murder (Being Mary Jane, I’m looking at you).
I will give Ordinary Love credit for provoking one interesting thought. I always belonged to the school of thought of fighting cancer by any means necessary. One character encouragingly says, “It is better than the alternative.” Is it if you just die of cancer anyway? I have witnessed both sides of the equation, and as I get older, I question my ability to withstand sustained, long term pain. I do not fear death or the afterlife, but I definitely hate pain so maybe I prefer the alternative. I know that my loved ones would want to spend as much time with me as possible, but if you are the one in actual pain, the quality of that time for the sufferer may make that precious time torture. It is a personal decision, and the film effectively visually depicts that cruel separation even in the most loving situation in quotidian and oneiric ways.
If you are a fan of Manville and/or Neeson, then definitely check out Ordinary Love, but you can wait until it is available for home viewing unless you are like the onscreen couple and have all the time and money in the world to devote to a trip to the theater.