Ep. 87: Ordinary Love and Hope: Couples dealing with cancer

Alex Heeney

Welcome to the Seventh Row podcast, a weekly podcast in which we compare and contrast films to discover new insights and context for films both new and old. I'm your host Alex Heeney, editor-in-chief of Seventh Row. Seventh Row is a nonprofit online film criticism, publication and publishing house dedicated to helping you discover the best under the radar, female directed and foreign films. We want to help you think deeply about why and how great films make you feel the way they do. If you liked this podcast, consider becoming a film adventure. Remember, as a film adventurer, you'll receive weekly streaming recommendations by email, discounts on our merchandise and books, access to our back catalogue of podcasts episodes, and a free ebook. As soon as you make your purchase visit seven-row.com/join to find out more that's seventh-row.com/slash. Soon, all episodes more than six months old will only be available to our members. As a member, you'll receive a personalized premium feed of all of our episodes, and you can still listen to it from your favorite pod catcher

Orla Smith

So just before we get on with the episode, we wanted to let you know that we have a new book out, which is super exciting. Our latest ebook is called In their own words: fiction directors. It is unlike any ebook that we've ever made before, I'd say usually our ebooks focus on one theme or one filmmaker. And this is a book about filmmaking in general. Basically what we did is we went back through like the entire history of seven throw all the interviews with directors that we've ever done. And we pick the 70 plus best ones, we arrange them into nine different sections, including like working in different genres shooting post production, film versus theater, a bunch of others. And within each section there are questions so in like the section on devising and aesthetic questions include, how do you visualize memory on screen? Do you prefer to shoot on film or digital? How do you choose an aspect ratio? And within each question, you can find answers pulled from those 70 interviews for different directors so under do you prefer to shoot on film or digital? You can read six different filmmakers talking about their opinion on that question, which often those opinions vary wildly, but they're always incredibly well reasoned. And it's fascinating to kind of read them side by side. So you've got established filmmakers like Mike Lee, you have the words like Terence Davies you have sort of like beloved contemporary artists like Céline Sciamma, Kelly Reichardt. So you have people who've just made that first feature like Quinn Armstrong, you have the recently Oscar nominated Chloé Zhao. And yeah, it's a really fascinating book I think for if you're a film fan, I think reading it is going to help you understand the craft of cinema better, it will change the way you watch films, if you're a filmmaker, it's really vital resource. I make films myself, and I think that when I work on a project, I'm going to refer back to this book, if I'm stuck on a particular part of the creative process, I'm going to flip to a section of the book that's relevant to it and you know, get advice from the best. And for anyone, I think it's a vital way to discover like your next favorite filmmaker, if you'd like their insights. So we did a whole episode on this a couple episodes back on in their own words, fiction directors were the editors of the book kind of chat about what it's all about, and how he put it together. And if you want to go ahead and order it, you can just go to their own words.ca.

Alex Heeney

On today's episode, we are going to be discussing two films about couples dealing with cancer. Both of them are heterosexual couples, and the woman in the couple gets diagnosed with cancer, and they have to deal with what that means. So the first movie we'll be talking about is Ordinary Love. Which is an Irish film from this is 2019. Right?

Orla Smith

They're both from the exact same time, right?

Alex Heeney

And the other one will be the Norwegian film hope, which was shortlisted for the Best International feature at the Oscars this year, and it was cruelly robbed of a nomination.

Orla Smith

It absolutely was. And they both premiered at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival, which is where Alex saw Hope and I saw Ordinary Love.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, and we could compare notes. And I interviewed the director and two leads of Hope and you talked to Lesley Manville. So for this discussion, we have with us our editor at large Mary Angela Rowe.

Mary Angela Rowe

Hello

Alex Heeney

and as you just heard, our executive editor Orla Smith

Orla Smith

Hello. So this is a segment of the podcast where we read reviews. So please, please, please leave us reviews on Apple podcasts because we love to read them. It always makes our week and we actually got one this week, which was super, super happy about and yet whenever we get reviews, we read them out on the podcast. And so yeah, this review is... always a terrible mistake if I tried to read out the the Apple names of the people who read good because they're always nonsense. This is from jmattingey. And yeah, it has less less underscores. And the last thing that I had to read out and so that's, that's fine, that one's doable. They leave us five stars, and they say "wholesome content. I really like. I really like the Naomi kawsay episode and found your guests Millie really engaging to listen" So thank you. She really is great. Yes. And hopefully we'll have her on again. If she'll have us. And yeah, thank you. I'm glad that you find I'm raging against the male film Critics wholesome. That's the aim. We don't know if we always pull it off. So it's really nice to hear. We've actually had like, really good feedback from that episode, I think.

Alex Heeney

We have yeah

Orla Smith

I think it's interesting, because you wouldn't think that like a Naomi Kawase podcast would do like super well.

Alex Heeney

It's gonna be our popular one.

Orla Smith

Yeah, but I feel like there's a niche that is an untapped niche that people aren't discussing her work. And when we made that episode, like all these people came out of the woodwork saying that they are like huge fans of hers. And, and we're kind of like, excited to hear someone reevaluating her work. So I think it's a sign that we need more of this.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. And attention distributors.

Orla Smith

Yes.

Alex Heeney

Please distribute her films, so that we can all see them

Orla Smith

streaming services program Naomi Kawase seasons, like MUBI has done here in the UK? They've got three films. Yeah.

Alex Heeney

But like, why don't they do it elsewhere? Why don't we? Where's the Naomi Kawase Criterion Box set?

Orla Smith

Exactly. We just had the Wong Kar-War one, where is Kawase one. And also

Alex Heeney

That would be like the first time anybody can see her film.

Orla Smith

It would be such a great niche to fill, because it would literally make it possible to watch her films. Yeah. So thank you feel that review. And please, other people leave more of them. five star reviews. Yes, please. It helps us. And seriously, we really do. It really does make our week we do remember them.

Alex Heeney

Like, if you are sitting around being like I feel unimportant in the world, I haven't seen people in a year, if you want to be like the most important person in someone's life for a week leave us a review.

Orla Smith

If you want to be personally responsible for serotonin entering my brain, then you can just leave a review. It can literally be one line like this review, and you can know that you've done that good at the world.

Alex Heeney

Orla do you want to say something about why we paired these two together? Because it was like kind of your idea kind of mine, I don't know whose idea was it?

Orla Smith

It's hard to pinpoint whose idea it was because it's just such an obvious idea. Like, I think what we really wanted to do a podcast about Hope, since it's sort of like, you know, being released and was on the Oscars shortlist, now is the time to do it. And in thinking about what film to pair it with, I don't think we would have done a podcast on Ordinary Love otherwise.

Alex Heeney

No

Orla Smith

But it seemed like the obvious comparison point because they were both films like again, they premiered at TIFF The same year, and they have like eerily similar plots. And I remember I was watching Ordinary Love at the time and I liked it. But I had some problems with it. Like I didn't super get into it. I wasn't I didn't like exactly know how to describe the problems that I had with it. And then this year, I watched Hope finally, which you had been telling me was great for over a year. And finally was able to kind of like, verbalize what was missing from Ordinary Love because it was all there in Hope. And so I think Ordinary Love is like a perfect comparison point to Hope because it sort of exemplifies a lot of the things that Hope is doing that so great that we don't often see in films about this subject matter. So I think this will be interesting. And I guess the other thing is that neither of them are quite what you might expect for my cancer movie. Like I think that Ordinary Love has a lot more tropes, but nobody dies, spoiler.

And they're also sort of both in some way based on the experiences of one of the people that was involved with the film, but more directly with Hope. In Hope, the director Maria Sødahl based it on her own experiences and as with the main characters, kind of a proxy for herself and in Ordinary Love, the two filmmakers took on a script by a playwright Owen McCafferty. He wrote a play based on his experiences of his wife being diagnosed with breast cancer. And then that play, he adapted into the film and the film was directed by two other people who are not him.

Alex Heeney

I think they're husband and wife.

Orla Smith

Yeah, but they haven't had cancer

Alex Heeney

obviously, as you can tell in the film ,or been to a hospital or well, whatever. I'll save that. But yeah, I mean, they both talked about not wanting to make sentimental cancer films. And I don't necessarily think that either is sentimental though Ordinary Love is maybe

Mary Angela Rowe

Comes closest.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. Okay, so we'll start with Ordinary Love. Here's the trailer.

Orla Smith

So ordinary loves stars, Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville as a sort of a couple living a very sort of normal, mundane, everyday life, and they live in Ireland in a nice house. And then one day, very, very early on in the film, she finds a lump in her breast. So she goes to the doctor, she checks it out. They're like, it's probably a cyst. But you know, we're gonna check it in case. And then after a series of tests, she finds out that it's cancerous. And goes through a series of treatments of surgery, chemotherapy, and the film is sort of an examination of their relationship, and how it's affected or like not affected by the cancer and how kind to what extent normal life and that everyday conversation persists, even through this ordeal. She also makes a friend with another cancer patient that they have. They had a daughter, who who died. We don't know how but she died in the past. And so that we know they've been through an ordeal themselves. And that daughter's teacher also happens to be in the cancer ward. So she befriends him. And yeah, it's kind of a procedural film almost that takes us through like the step by step of her treatment and her recovery.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, sounds good to me.

Orla Smith

I guess it is sort of, I guess one of my problems with the film, especially the second time is, is it does feel like very much like the ideal scenario in every way. Like that the she has cancer, but she's able to sort of recover for it without like, it becomes clear at a certain point that she's probably going to get through this. She has an a supportive husband of many years, their relationship is quite uncomplicated. And they're like,

Alex Heeney

There are no financial constraints of her cancer treatmeant. They have no financial constraints, no responsibilities because they don't have children. They don't seem to have jobs or friends or hobbies or goals are passions.

Orla Smith

Alex wasn't a fan. They, they are very upper middle class. So yeah, money is not there's a couple scenes where they sort of talk about, like money in the abstract, but it's not really like a problem for them. So it's sort of a situation where it's like the experience of having cancer and going through cancer treatment, but like, take away a lot of like, the wrinkles that actually make that situation more complicated for like a vast majority of people. And I think that while that allows you to sort of just observe their relationship in a vacuum. And it can only be so interesting, because it gets to a point where it doesn't, it doesn't really reflect real life and the real lived experience of like the majority of people who are going to go through this. And that kind of is, I mean, like the couple in Hope are, like, reasonably wealthy and like they're better off than

Alex Heeney

They were definitely way wealthier than the people in ordinary love.

Orla Smith

Yeah, exactly. But it's not as much of a problem in that film. Because I mean, first of all, there's more specificity to that cover. Whereas in Ordinary Love, I feel like you can trace the problem right to the title, which is got the word ordinary. And it's basically saying like, these are normal people, these people are just like you. And it's almost trying to avoid specificity in a way that hope isn't hope. It's very much like this is my story. And these are all the complications that came with it, where this film very much purports to be about ordinary people and an ordinary relationship, but doesn't really kind of question what ordinary means. Like, what does cancer interrupt watching television and going for walks? So they're like, okay, I guess we'll do cancer treatments now. Instead, that will be our new hobby. M.A., what did you think?

Mary Angela Rowe

I think Ordinary Love suffered in comparison to Hope, which we'll talk about later. But I didn't think it was as bad as all that. All of your criticisms are perfectly valid, Alex, these people appear to have no skills or interests, they appear to have no friends. And that it works is I mean, it functions as a capsule of their marriage under this one particular stressor. I had two problems with the movie. One was that they don't go anywhere. In fact, at the end of the movie, close to the end of the movie, Joan says, you know, I thought cancer would change me but it didn't. And these people's marriage is exactly the same at the beginning of the movies. It wasn't the end as individuals are exactly the same as they were at the end. Other people seem transformed by cancer much more than either of them are. So that is criticism number one. And criticism number two is that there's no meaningful conflict in their relationship. Yeah. Which goes back to the these people don't go anywhere. They have one fight. The fight is stupid and patently unjustifiable, given what we know about both of them. They're annoyances with each other are fond annoyances, he she thinks he drinks too much. He doesn't appear to really, he sort of fondly thinks she faces too much. She doesn't appear to really.

Orla Smith

Yeah. And so it seems like they have so little to talk about in other aspects that they just have to pick up on tiny details of fussing too much or drinking too much alcohol because they can't talk about like hanging out with friends. They don't have.

Mary Angela Rowe

Yeah, they don't do things or talk about things. So mostly do is go out for dinner.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, it really recalled that line from film made by noted child rapist, Woody Allen, but, you know, occasionally they might have good ideas and is one good idea. Among several I suppose, in Annie Hall is that Alvy Singer is walking down the street and he sees this couple that looks really happy. And he says, what's your secret? And they say, well, I I'm stupid, and she's stupid. And we never have anything interesting to say. Yeah, I think the film like it's defined their lives are very defined by rituals, like we see them going on this walk every day up to this particular tree. That is where they stop and turn around which that's how you get Alzheimer's guys.

Mary Angela Rowe

What do you mean by that?

Alex Heeney

If you do everything on autopilot, that's how you get Alzheimer's like one of the ways to prevent Alzheimer's. I mean, not how you get it. But one of the ways to prevent Alzheimer's is like to change, you know, if your route is always like I walked down the left stairs instead of the right stairs. If that's what you always do, then you want to sometimes change it up or I always walk on the right side of the street or the north side of the street instead of the south. Then you get into these habitual patterns and so you aren't using your brain actively.

Orla Smith

Thanks for that tip. Alex. I'm going to keep that in mind. Actually I mean, it's interesting you say that because I mean, were they I feel like this film is interesting to watch for I'm now locked down perspective. I mean, this couple is basically in lockdown voluntarily. And I mean, in lockdown, I have learned that I've become very frustrated with the fact that in the town that I live in, there are only so many walking routes you can take. And if you take the same one every single day, it drives you crazy. So I mean, I feel sorry for them that they only have apparently one direction that they can walk in.

Alex Heeney

I mean they could go for a slightly longer walk one day 10 paces pass the tree

Orla Smith

Nah. And this is the opening and the ending of the film, I believe them walking up to the tree.

Alex Heeney

And then also him feeding the goldfish is something that happens repeatedly throughout the film

Orla Smith

Yeah until the goldfish dies. And then he gets a new one

Mary Angela Rowe

And then he replaces the goldfish without telling his wife that he's killed the goldfish

Orla Smith

the dead goldfish, representing a possible dead wife in the future.

Alex Heeney

And their dead child seems to be a non issue like we see her bedroom and that they haven't moved anything in it since she died. And they have a photo of I think it's like her high school graduation photo.

Orla Smith

she seems to exist in the plot to like to tell us that they've been through an ordeal before and therefore can get through this one.

Unknown Speaker

It was kind of less bothered by by that. I don't know, in the sense that like, I feel like it is realistic to grieve, and then have a life beyond grief. And I kind of liked that this was a film where the family had experienced trauma and their lives weren't defined by it.

Unknown Speaker

Although I think leaving the bedroom. I mean, I don't know, I'm not a psychiatrist here. But the fact that they have left the bedroom in tact suggests unresolved feelings.

Mary Angela Rowe

I don't know, maybe that's their way of saying that she's still there.

Orla Smith

It's not so much that I have a problem with that in isolation. What you are saying MA, I just feel like the film seems incredibly insistent on the fact that this couple shouldn't deal with any problems as a result of this experience they're going through. And I mean, even the fact that the opening image and the closing image at the same is kind of indicative of that, like, as you said, they're not really changed by this experience. And it's kind of the happy ending is that they are back where they started. And I think one of the things I said that I appreciated the first time I watched it, despite its flaws was like to see the procedural element of the film, the fact that we kind of go through this with her step by step. And we sort of go into the the nitty gritty details of her treatment, although even that I feel was kind of dampened by watching Hope, which goes into sort of even more detail. But other than that it I don't know, it felt like the film can only be so interesting. If they don't go through anything. They don't experience any conflict. And there are all these possible sources of conflict in their life that I never used to sources of conflict, because the film is almost scared to introduce conflict.

Mary Angela Rowe

Well, the film is really invested in the idea that there are perfect marriage, right?

Orla Smith

Yeah. The idea that a perfect marriage can exist, and can weather anything other people break up when their child dies, but we stuck together and we're fine. And now we're going to be fine through cancer.

Unknown Speaker

I mean, I know it's a criticism. And I know it's pat. And I know that this film is kind of capital H heartwarming TM. But I have to say there was something kind of nice about seeing an older, long married couple on film who weren't simmering with resentment toward each other. It was sort of refreshing, at least for the first 30 minutes of the film to be like, Oh, these people seem to have a perfectly nice marriage. And the point of the film isn't how they're going to fracture, except they're fine.

Alex Heeney

I think maybe a bit of a fantasy. I mean, as much as I do agree with that. I think also, I think what would be more interesting is if the film sort of portrayed that you can have a very healthy marriage as they do. And nevertheless, experience conflict, exactly. Like part of having a healthy relationship is being able to experience conflict and be able to resolve it together in a healthy way. And Coach Taylor and Tammy Taylor do fight sometimes. But I mean, as as much as like, I guess, like her having cancer is a conflict. Technically, it's not really a conflict.

Unknown Speaker

It doesn't change their marriage. Yeah. And the film introduces some promising ideas. Like, it introduces how he's incredibly uncomfortable in hospitals and doesn't like collections of sick people. And you can imagine this becoming a point of contention between them, but he appears to deal with this kind of seamlessly, and he appears to deal with it by never mentioning it again.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. So I think it's interesting when she goes in for her first tests, he keeps talking But how they're gonna do everything together and the film, excuse me, the way that scene is pointedly shot is you see them parting ways where she goes in for the test. And then she spots him in the waiting room through the window. So it's very much in a way, not something that they're going through together. Because as she points out, it's her body, not his. And he is being like, well, we'll get the thing that you need in order to get you better. It's like human, I'm going to suffer so that I don't die. And, you know, yes, you're having an experience too. But this is my cancer, not yours. But then it doesn't really become a source of, but then it's like, oh, well, I guess I'm alone in this, but he's, you know, cleaning up my vomit. So everything's fine.

Orla Smith

And it's interesting, because like the gay couple that they befriend, kind of have a similar issue in the sense that like, their husband of the guy getting who has cancer sort of has a difficulty with like hospitals, and he's having challenges with a situation and he's kind of like, not willing to face it, which is something that you see like, a smaller version of possibly being a problem with the main characters, but then it doesn't become a problem. And they just have to, like help the other couple solve it. The conflict is sort of transferred to other people, and quickly resolved. Whereas again, I think the film is kind of afraid to introduce conflict, lest it imply that their marriage is less than perfect, when it still can be a great, I think we would get more of a sense of how they fit together and why they're so good for each other. If we saw them encountering, like real obstacles and trying to solve them.

Alex Heeney

They don't even have any joint anxiety. I don't know anybody who's ever had a head surgery and not been anxious about it. Like even you know, something minor, like wisdom teeth surgery, most people are somewhat anxious about it. They don't just like calmly walk in like, Okay, no problem. Because I'm doing this oh, I guess I'm going to take some drugs that like, are going to basically kill me to save me. Most people have some amount of stress about going in for a procedure that they don't know, you know, they've never had, they know that there are risks, they might know that it's necessary, but they don't know what it's like, like, I've never had cancer. But there I have been into surgery and have been in a hospital and their experiences in the hospital are just so alien to me from my experience that like it's there's a lot of discomfort, even if you're not terrified. And there's anxiety. I mean, they show a little bit of this, but there's a lot of anxiety and uncertainty.

Unknown Speaker

I want to push back a little bit on your assertion that the film doesn't show it. Because I think that there are lots of perfectly valid reasons to criticize this film. But I'm not totally sure that's one of them, you can say that they under react like that's fair, but especially in the early moments, the film goes out of its way to show how Tom seems to be overcompensating for his anxiety by barking at people and how she feels the need to constantly quiet him down and how she's worried about how things appear. When they actually appear fine. And this preoccupation with them. Him not embarrassing her seems to be her way of dealing with the distress she's feeling.

Unknown Speaker

that's fair, I guess. I mean, there are occasional moments of it. I guess. It's just that they seem to at some point going into the hospital is wrote even before it becomes rote? I don't know. It just there doesn't seem to be much concern or anxiety about it. You know, she doesn't even say like, oh, I'm kind of worried. And then he comforts her. Like, there's a little bit of her catastrophizing and her him being like, Oh, it's no problem. And then it turns out, he's totally right, which like, that kind of backfired.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I mean, I think compared to hope there is less sort of specific detail in that sense. But I think especially like when I saw this back in 2019, compared to Hope, I had the seen many not comparing it to Hope. Sorry, I don't think I'd seen many cancer movies that were this like, specific about the mundane details.

Alex Heeney

That's true.

Orla Smith

The process of getting diagnosed, then the process like afterwards of getting treatment and the many stages of that then preparing for each stage of treatment. I think it does, I really appreciated its attention to mundane details, even though, like we have an example I will say of how it could have possibly done even more, and possibly leaned even more into the more anxiety inducing darker elements. I think this film is nervous to go beyond a certain level of darkness. But within the parameters of what is doing, I think it is sort of like gratifyingly interested in the details.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, like to be fair, Anja in Hope is like very intense. It's just that these guys are unconcerned to a degree that it's like, I feel like they're Alex Honnold with, you know, an undeveloped amygdala and so they get signed to just go climbing with without ropes, maybe part of what I'm responding to is the fact that in home, there's that mundanity. But there's also this sense of like the just the exhaustion of the repetition, and evolve of the fact that you have to keep you have to run around, you have to go to like one place to another place to another place.

Orla Smith

And, and also, the focus on a, like a 10 day timeline also helps that, whereas this film was trying to I believe it said over a year, because it starts around Christmas and ends around Christmas.

Alex Heeney

But I mean, honestly, like, my experience is that when, you know is not necessarily always but there is something about, like, just the grind is exhausting. It's it's really, it's a really exhausting thing that takes up time and energy, and I guess, Ordinary Love. Fortunately, they don't need their time and energy for literally anything else.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably the film's biggest problem is the lack of specificity with the characters. I mean, there's nothing really for them to be anxious about because the film hasn't flesh them out as much, you can trace a lot of the problems back to that. And we have really no sense of part of the reason that it was hard to kind of do a particularly long fleshed out synopsis of the film is that there isn't beyond like, the medical processes of things. There's not much to say about these two people, I wouldn't be able to tell you much about the I can tell you that they have a loving functional relationship, but I can't really tell you who they are separate from each other. And I think especially compared to Hope, which is full of these like specificities and rich complexities is the biggest problem of the film.

Alex Heeney

I will also say that it does fall into some big cancer tropes. The major one being the cancer friend TM

Orla Smith

Yeah, mixed in with the tragic gay friend

Alex Heeney

Yeah, right

Mary Angela Rowe

Yeah, bury your gays

Alex Heeney

You know, every TV depiction of cancer is like they meet their cancer friend. And you know, the cancer friend dies first, and the character may or may not die. But they, the cancer friend is the only person who understands and so they have all their conversations together, and they help each other get through the cancer and the cancer friend is always more advanced in their treatment, or also possibly with a bleaker prognosis. And the cancer friend has no real personality or thoughts or feelings beyond being there.

Orla Smith

I felt so sorry for the cancer friend, because every time they talk to each other, the she, the scene will start and he'll be like, oh, how are you doing, Joan, and she'll be she'll, like, give a monologue about how she's feeling. And then if he's lucky, he'll be able to slip in some like details about some unasked for details about how he's doing. She'll never and I paid attention, she basically doesn't once ask him how he's doing or any questions about himself, anytime he talks about himself. It's, it's at the end of her talking about herself, and he's kind of related it to something that's happening in his life. But really, what's happening in his life is a lot more kind of stressful. That I mean, he's dying, and he has a more fraught relationship with his partner and profession. I mean, it's not really a relationship that they have so much as it is like he's a sounding board.

Alex Heeney

And I suppose he's also there so that they can call themselves an Irish film. Because is your film Irish, if David Wilmot isn't in it

Orla Smith

and they also have him there so that when he's dead, the journey and Tom can invite his partner over to Christmas dinner, and she,

Mary Angela Rowe

Which we don't actually see

Orla Smith

No we see the empty tables, and she's like, what do we have to invite him over? And then he's like, you would be nice. And she's like, yeah, but do we have to? She's like, go on, then. If you really want to, we'll invite this poor grieving man to Christmas dinner.

Alex Heeney

He probably have no other friends just like us.

Orla Smith

Yeah. And then that's sufficient evidence of them being nice people, but we don't have to, as you said, actually see the dinner

Unknown Speaker

I thought they would dig into that actually, like I kind of when that scene happened, I was like, aha, maybe we're getting somewhere like maybe, like, maybe they dig into why she was so reluctant. Is it that she doesn't want to be reminded of this person who's just died and she's grieving. And she's having issues with that. Is it that she is dealing with sort of the intense relief of not being dead herself and just wants to spend time with him, which they seem to always do.

Alex Heeney

survivor's guilt. At the same time.

Unknown Speaker

Yes. What's behind this reaction?

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, you're right. There could have been so many interesting ways of going with this. Are we gonna dig into that privilege at this late point in the film? Possibly? No. Yeah, no, there could have been so many interesting things to go there with that you're so right. And they don't do that

Mary Angela Rowe

It seems weirdly invested in the idea of their marriage and not invested in them as individuals at all. Like it doesn't really consider them. You're just considered them two halves of a marriage. And when something is happening, to her, it is happening to them. And the thing I found interesting about this film and Hope together is like, if you're a woman, you watch these films with a statistic in your mind, like, the reality is that in marriages, men are more likely to leave the partner if she gets a terminal illness, whereas women are more likely to stay with a partner when he gets a terminal illness in heterosexual relationships, right, regardless of how the relationship is going before. And so I was sort of watching both of these movies being like, how are they going to deal with this fundamental gender situation that we all live with? And that's like, if you're a woman, and if you're in a partnership, you're sort of like, is my partner going to both if something happens to me, maybe, and hope, I think dealt with it really well, for reasons that we will talk about later, because it shows both partners struggling with the situation. And this film did not deal with that reality at all. The film didn't deal with the reality of like, normal caretaking roles turning around, and how that can change people or make people think differently, you know,

Unknown Speaker

Because to acknowledge that there is a gender imbalance would be to acknowledge that they're not perfect. And yeah, I don't think the film is willing to do that, or that they have different experiences. It would acknowledge them as like, not a unit

Mary Angela Rowe

or moments where the film had opportunities to explore difficult things, and it shied away like again, she has a double mastectomy.

Unknown Speaker

But I mean, when that scene happened, I, they kind of brushed over it, and they're talking about it beforehand. And then a couple scenes later, she's like, Well, yeah, I had this double mastectomy. And I'm like, wait, you had it already? When did that happen? To have a sex scene where she's like, are you gonna miss my breasts? And he's like, yes, let me kiss your breath. That's the end of it well, and then she just suddenly had surgery.

Unknown Speaker

So on the one hand, again, like nice to see a middle aged average couple who have been married for all those many years, apparently have a normal and healthy sex life. So that like nice to see. But like the scene where they talk about where he says that and that's the only time they really deal with the anxiety surrounding a double mastectomy. And then you see a scene later, after she's had the surgery where she's putting on clothing and a mirror and you see her in profile, and she's wearing a bra. And the implication is, at my reconstructed breasts look exactly the same as they always did. You know, look at this. Look at this great result.

Unknown Speaker

And it's sort of like it was not a big deal at all. Also no rehab. Like I know enough. Now I have learned some things through discussion through talking to physiotherapist about the horrors of like recovering from surgery in your breasts. And there's a lot you got to do to like, deal with the scar tissue. You're not just like, magically oh, I'm just like my old self except minus my real breasts. I mean, the film's outlook seems to be all these things are really frightening in the lead up to them. And then but then, you know, it's not worth being frightened about because it's actually fine. In the end, it's just like, it's just like the worrying about it. That's a problem without, like dealing with the actual, like, physical and emotional consequences. I mean, also her chemo treatments seem to be bad for like one day each. I mean, again, it's it's part of the fight that they're trying to show a whole year but in the in the process of doing that they really underplay the trauma of each of those individual things.

Mary Angela Rowe

And like the underplay something which gets mentioned early on, but which I think is kind of fundamental to understanding the rest of what goes on is like her chemo and her double mastectomy is essentially preventative. Right? Yeah, they're saying we got all the tumors that we know about, but this is just in case you get cancer again. So it's not like those are essential for her survival. Now, it's just that it's so it feels fundamentally different to me that these incredibly invasive and life altering procedures are solely preventative, as opposed to being to to deal with a condition that has already matured, or at least it would I think it would feel that way to me, you know, yeah.

Unknown Speaker

I mean, I guess it's a bit easier in the sense that she's already gone through menopause. So it's not as complicated to, in some ways to to get the double mastectomy, but, I mean, it's a big part of your body to have removed, like, regardless of what your relationship is, with your breasts, you know, it's a, it's a lot of cuts. It's gonna hurt, it's gonna hurt and it's gonna change how you move. It's gonna change your entire physicality because how you your weight is distributed.

Orla Smith

No, Alex, it doesn't. The same as you were before

Alex Heeney

Oh right, sorry.

Mary Angela Rowe

Yeah. And ultimately, that's the biggest problem with this movie, right? They go through this experience, which should be life altering and are not altered. And they lose a friend and they are not changed by this.

Alex Heeney

They have to bring someone over for Christmas. Yeah. Alright, so we're gonna move on to hope. Here's the trailer. So hope is a film written and directed by Maria Sødahl who has written the film based on her own experiences. And it takes place over this two week period where her character based on her Anja played by the amazing Andrea Bræin Hovig. She's just premiered this new dance project abroad it went amazingly. And now she she's a choreographer.

Mary Angela Rowe

Yes. And we open on her dance project, by the way.

Unknown Speaker

Yes, yeah. So we open on her dance project. It's this huge success. And she comes home and she realizes that she's had this headache that she can't get rid of. And so they decide, you know, her husband's heard persuades her to go see the doctor the next day. And when she does, she finds out that she has to get some tests. And she discovers that she has a brain tumor. And we find out that she had had lung cancer and went through treatment and recovered. And we and this new tumor may have spread from the lungs and it's not curable and they don't know where it is exactly. It's they don't know whether or not it's operable. And this all happens right before Christmas, which means nobody is around to answer any of these questions. So they have to live with a huge amount of uncertainty. You know, while they're just waiting to find out what the results of the scans were waiting for the specialists to get back. And so Anka is married to Thomas played by Stellan Skarsgård, who was about 20 years her senior and he had three kids in a previous marriage and then the two of them fell in love while he was still married. He left his first wife for her and then they now have three kids together as well. Which is nothing compared to Stellan Skarsgård's real life, with like nine

Mary Angela Rowe

oh my god.

Unknown Speaker

I think no, he only has eight.

Orla Smith

oh, that's fine. I guess if you're a rich Hollywood actor, then you can afford to have eight kids and also two of them have become big movies does. So they make you back your money.

Unknown Speaker

Just out of interest how many wives or partners are parents of kids? Was this the same woman because that just is like

Unknown Speaker

No. They're definitely different marriages. I don't know how many times he's been married, but I assume at least twice.

Orla Smith

He's been married twice. Yeah.

Mary Angela Rowe

Okay. Well, that's slightly less terrifying.

Unknown Speaker

Just slightly. Yeah. So they have a lot of kids. Where was I going with this anyway, and we sort of find out in snippets that basically she kind of put her career on hold for him. And after she went through this big cancer, I was going to say scare but it was real cancer. She went through treatment for cancer the last year it sort of had become her turn and this dance performance be she just premiered did really well. It's been invited to all these other festivals. And now she's facing down like, am I even going to be alive a month from now. And she has no information. And she is a very anxious person who immediately catastrophize is, and I guess the really the thing is, she's got swelling in her brain because of this tumor. So they put her on these steroids that can make you psychotic. They're basically like so that you don't die within the next 10 days, you need to be on these incredibly strong drugs. Yeah, they basically reduce the swelling, they get rid of the fluid, but they have really strong side effects. So when she gets really intense or even mean, is it because of the tumor? Is it because of the drugs? Or is it her? And we don't necessarily know and neither does? Yeah. And so the film, I think, takes is pretty even handed, I think in the way that it deals with the fact that they have these problems that they have had problems in their marriage, many of which are gender related problems of his male privilege and the expectations of women. And the fact that they therefore are dealing with this in different ways, because it means different things for them. You know, it means the cutting off of her dreams and her career just as she was able to really get it going. And for him it means losing someone he loved, but also somebody who's like kind of his personal assistant,

Unknown Speaker

Well, not really his personal assistant, but just like the sole actual parent who deals with the household.

Unknown Speaker

I'm being a little glib here.

Orla Smith

But I mean, I like a good reference point for the differences between how this couple is portrayed and the couple in Ordinary Love is the like the scene where she gets her diagnosis, in both. So like an Ordinary Love the scene where they find out that the lump was cancerous. They're very much Tom and Joanne shot equally in the frame. And they both have basically the same reaction of like, I guess, like looking bit sad. And yeah, but they, their expressions are practically the same. And whereas in this film, I mean, I think you wrote about this in either of your review or your interview Alex about how like that scene is shot, so that we kind of aware of like that completely different reaction. So I guess you can probably talk to that.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, I mean, I think the film as a whole is shot more from Anja's perspective, that's a key difference of as well, it's a more of a subjective film to her rares. I think Ordinary Love is very much like a two hander. Even though there are a lot of two shots they go through, they are united front and a lot of things, especially in the sound is a bit more subjective towards her. And just generally the camera privileges her a bit more like in that scene. She's at the front of the frame, he's at the back of the frame, she's kind of facing us. And he's sort of on the side, and he breaks down and she kind of looks at him almost like I can't believe you're crying now. Like there's stuff to deal with. And she's just she's immediately worried about the logistics

Mary Angela Rowe

and all of the scenes through the film of her picking up her phone and being like, I can't read and making him read who's calling and then her picking up the phone and dealing with whatever it is, like how much more vividly could you possibly illustrate the fact that she does all the work of the relationship and it doesn't even occur to him that he should probably take over the dentist appointment thing, you know?

Alex Heeney

That is hilarious. I don't need an appointment. I have terminal cancer.

Mary Angela Rowe

My teeth don't matter.

Orla Smith

Oh, man, that was good. Well, I mean, they get to be like, funny as well. Like they have so much personality. And it definitely does. I mean, you can sense in the filmmaking how personal This story was to the person who made it because it is so specific. And I mean, I guess your experience with this film has also changed dramatically by like whether you know, the story behind it's making, for me anyway. Yeah, the first time you watched it was, you had like didn't really know much about the film at all. And then the second time you said it was a much more less anxious experience because like, you know that the director survived because she made the movie

Mary Angela Rowe

you also know because there's a title card at the opening of the film which says this is my story as I remember

Unknown Speaker

Which I don't think was in the screener that I I had a non final cut. I don't think that was there. And I can't remember, buyt i don't think i had the final sound mix either. Even though the sound was very good. Because in the interview was when I discovered it was her story.

Orla Smith

Also, like if you just divorce it from their real life situation like the film doesn't end with her finding out that she's fine now. It still ends ambiguously you'd like but within the real world contexts, you can imply that she's survived but it's not necessarily within the text of the film.

Mary Angela Rowe

But that's sort of not what the film is about. Like, exactly. It's a film about a marriage.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, I think it just for me what it where it reads differently is, if you don't know she's going to survive, I think I was just angry or on her behalf. like watching it again, I'm kind of like, Well, I think she's just kind of catastrophizing, and I totally understand why she's doing that. But this is not necessarily like, like her reaction is maybe an overreaction and things are maybe going to be okay. And you're able to think more about how like, this is almost a metaphorical story in the sense that it's just like, what would happen if you took this relationship, and you put it under extreme circumstances and saw how it changed, and you're able to kind of like, relax and think more about, well, that relationship has changed by this situation in this way? What's it going to be like going forward? Then you would if you were like, well, there is gonna be no going forward.

Mary Angela Rowe

But we still kind of don't know, right? Like one of the points. Okay, so the title card at the beginning, saying, This is my story, as I remember, it helps or helped me, because it made it clear with the narrator who, as Alex said, The film is clearly from audience perspective that our POV character and narrator was going to survive at least the duration of the film. But the film makes a point of mentioning several times that the cancer itself is incurable. So even if they operate, she's going to die from this. It's just a matter of how much time she has

Unknown Speaker

this. This happened to her a decade ago.

Mary Angela Rowe

Nice, cool. Okay, the way the way I took the way the film talked about it was that it was like this cancer is going to kill you. This operation might buy you some more time. But it's only buying your time.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. Which is still true. But it's I think it's just, you know, they don't want to give her false hope. And they don't know, like the that's the thing. There's a lot of uncertainty around cancer and film, I think it's very good at dealing with how so much of the stress is that they don't know.

Orla Smith

One of the things I like about the film is is very much that like, it's, as we said, it's not really about, like, whether she makes it through or not, I think it's very pointed that even though she did survive, and has lived, like 10 more years, that they didn't put the scene that they easily could have put at the end where we find that out. And I think in a lot of cancer films, you start with a diagnosis, which this film does, but it also like she's had cancer before. And I think that's not something that you usually see in these films, but also, they usually either end with the death or they end with someone finding out that they'll be fine. And this film doesn't do either. Well, it doesn't do that, certainly. And I think that's one of the things that makes it stand out. But it also puts the emphasis on the fact that this is a relationship movie, rather than this is a film about like whether someone recovered from cancer or not.

Alex Heeney

I think I also just had a different experience. I mean, I feel like we should talk a bit about the gender dynamics and their relationship. But I think I was a lot angrier at him the first time I saw it than the second time, because the film really front loads all of the reasons why he's problematic. Like she comes home from the trip. And she sees that he's just arriving home too, and that he had put the his elder kids in charge of taking care of the younger kids when they had agreed he would stay home in the evenings while she was gone, which is what she does when he goes away. And then there's talk of how her production was such a success, and how you know, our friend of hers as it was finally Your turn, and her father is visiting for Christmas. And he's kind of like you're not very happy with your husband, are you I wish you were happier. And her being so very worried about telling the kids how do we rate it to the kids? What's going to happen? If I'm not here? Are you going to still take care of the kids?

Mary Angela Rowe

You need to find somebody to take care of the kids basically? Yeah, find a partner so someone can take care of these children?

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, and are you going to take care of me? And we've had problems and do you even love me? And and because the film is shot from her perspective, I was much more, you know, righteously indignant. Oh, I still am uncertain about them. But I think I'm a bit more positively tipped towards him, because I see what he does afterwards. And I think there are so many hostile or problematic ways he could have dealt with this. But he stays calm. He lets her vent at him. He tells her he doesn't act as though it hasn't happened. He does tell her that, you know, he says to her, it's it can be hard to help you. Which is a very nice way of saying something that is true and needs to be said without blaming her. And you can see like, she says things that hurt him and you can see he's, he's hurt, but he's not taking the bait because he knows that she's stressed. He knows that he doesn't know whether it's her that, you know, like there's just it takes a certain amount of emotional maturity to just let someone come at you like that. And also, I mean, there's a degree to which he does step up in the sense that he's doing research, he gets them appointments, he's driving them around. He comes with her to everything he's like, you know, you could read their interactions with the family. Either he's just like off to have fun with the family. But also at the same time, he's kind of holding down the fort so that she can quietly freak out in the kitchen. And someone else is kind of handling the family activities. Which is not to say that he doesn't mess up at all. But I think like, it would be hard to ask for someone, I think to handle that situation much better. Now, that doesn't excuse is that behavior. And it doesn't suggest that this isn't like, well, I'm going to take two weeks, this stressful time, I'm going to be great. And then I'm going to go back to relying on her for everything. But it did make me a bit more sympathetic toward him that I thought he handled the situation pretty well.

Unknown Speaker

He seems to want to be a good husband to her, even though they're not married. Yeah. And you can see him trying and groping toward that and sometimes making like, dumb, fall over and space moments, like, pick up the phone. But there's always that sense of effort from him, which is not present at the beginning of the movie until you get her diagnosis. And then you see him suddenly like, it's like he has a lightbulb moment. And he's like, oh, I have to try.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, I think even the fact that he when they find out about the surgery, he asked like, Can we get married beforehand? And I think the first time I saw the film, I read it the way she did like, it's kind of a, well, if she dies, you might as well at least get married before she's dead. Whereas I think this time around, I read it as he knows this is a stressful situation. And maybe this is a good time to do something to take her mind off of it and to do something life affirming that they've wanted to do.

Mary Angela Rowe

Oh, I took it a slightly differently.

Alex Heeney

Oh, okay.How did you take it?

Mary Angela Rowe

I mean, I don't think our readings are incompatible. Yeah, the moment you think you're about to lose something is the moment you realize how much you value it. And he's like, I think that in that moment, he's like, I want to be married. I did not want to be married before, because she talks a little bit later when they're talking to the chaplain about their history of like, maybe getting married, maybe not getting married, going back and forth. Ultimately, both of them decided that they didn't really want to be married. And I think in that moment, when he realizes that she's going into surgery, and she might die, right, there, is when he realizes that he wants that official recognition as her husband. And he wants their relationship to have all of the all have the ritualistic trappings that it's had the function of. So I read it not as like, as calculated as I think you did calculated. sounds bad, but your reading of It is him being thoughtful and trying to anticipate her needs. And I don't think Thomas is that smart.

Unknown Speaker

That's fair.

Orla Smith

I think I think I read it more along MA's lines. Yeah, I definitely read it that way. The first time. Maybe a bit more cynical.

Mary Angela Rowe

I think the movie suggests that Anja's perspective on this is he's shaded too negatively. The movie seems to suggest that this is a this is a warm and good thing that Thomas is doing. He wants to affirm their relationship. He wants their relationship to be to mean something and not just be two people who sleep in the same bed.

Unknown Speaker

Well okay, that's, I mean, they do a lot more than that. They they have a shared life together.

Unknown Speaker

Sure. But they navigate around each other before the diagnosis. Yeah, they have a shared household. But we don't really see the two of them interact. We see them side by side.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. Should we talk a bit more about the gender dynamics?

Orla Smith

Sure. What aspect?

Alex Heeney

I guess, like she's quite angry about missed opportunities, and feels like she has done a lot for him. And, you know, it would have been a different story if he had gotten sick.

Unknown Speaker

I mean, that does bring up two things for me. One is with both of these films, I wondered how the relationship would have been different and how the outcome for their relationship would have been different if it had been the man who got sick. Because the reality is that when the female partner gets sick, it allows the man to step up and play protector, which is a traditionally masculine role and can make men feel more manly, right? It can make it can make the man feel like he is affirming something good about himself, able to be there and step up. Whereas I do wonder, especially in the case of Ordinary Love, where Tom is presented as like a pretty masculine guy. I wonder how he would have taken it if he had been the one to get sick. And his wife had had to step up and do everything in our lives that he had previously done. And he had been vulnerable, and she had to take care of him. I think he would have had a lot more trouble with that.

Orla Smith

I think realistically, that's definitely true, although I'm not sure if the film would want you to think that necessarily, I think the film would want you to think that there are exactly equal footing because of film, other than things that we can kind of like implicitly glean from just the way that the actors hold themselves as people. It wants to place them on equal footing, whereas I feel like with hope, I think this is a much clearer dynamic than if it would have been flipped would have made the film completely different. Yes, I think there's also ambiguity and hope about whether that sort of stepping up in the protector role is a temporary thing and that when it becomes a caretaker role, will he still be as interested in playing it? I like that the film doesn't answer that question is content with letting you not know whether their relationship is healthy or not at the end, whether it's like healthiness is temporary, and you have to kind of sit with that ambiguity, which I think is a lot true at real relationships, then what we see an ordinary love, for example,

Unknown Speaker

I was gonna say pretty much the exact same thing, like at the end of the film, you can want to believe in them. And I do because I'm a huge sucker. And because these people have been married for 20 years, and you get a sense that their wedding of why they got together in the first place, and maybe they're remembering why they got together in the first place. So there is legitimately you can walk out of that theater, believing in them and not feeling like the film has lied to you about these characters, or that the film has undercut itself at the last minute.

Orla Smith

Like you really understand that closeness and their intimacy, even though they have in another sense drifted apart, they film gives you perfectly valid reasons why they're good together and why they might not be if they can't kind of adapt their behavior.

Unknown Speaker

I think also, I mean, the thing that the film does, which is maybe more romantic is it paints the fact that they've stayed together as a choice. And the marriage is part of that reaffirming of that choice, because I really liked that they have that conversation about whether or not they've been faithful. And we find out that he had an affair she knew, which is not surprising on either side. And that she fell in love with someone but decided it wasn't worth it. And there's a really like, the way she talks about not following her heart is very interesting that like it wouldn't have been worth like, she doesn't you don't get it like the dialog doesn't tell you a lot more than that. But I think that performance does that, like, you know, she might have had to make similar sacrifices with this guy, but she would have had problems with her, you know, she would have lost her children to a degree, you know, not that you would have lost them entirely, but you know, shared custody, etc, etc,

Mary Angela Rowe

she would have lost her family.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, you know, and then what happens in the film is they really, you know, they reaffirm their decision to be together. And then their daughter is kind of amazed by how affectionate they are with one another. And she'd never seen that before. And it's it's definitely ambiguous, but at least it's like they've chosen to be together, having just aired all of their problems.

Orla Smith

I mean, I guess it's like film is kind of asking is, is can a life changing experience like this be like a permanent change? Or is it just a temporary one, because if they genuinely do learn the lessons of the 10 days that we see, and they continue on this track, I think their relationship can be healthy. And I think the question is, like, will they learn or when things go back to normal? Well, they fall back into old patterns.

Mary Angela Rowe

Yeah. And the fact that she's had cancer before gives us enough reason to be skeptical, even as you want to be optimistic. And even as that last shot in the movie is like, wonderfully optimistic. The last shot in the movie suggests that she feels like she can count on him and she is counting on him.

Unknown Speaker

Then she feels close to him. At that point. Yes. Anyway, yeah. But there's a difference. I think the film is very smart about how there's a difference between being there for someone in a crisis versus being there for someone, which I guess is a point in Ordinary Love's favor that we do get to see that he continues to show up for her. Should we talk about how it deals with like hospitals and sickness?

Orla Smith

I guess I have less experience with hospitals than you do

Alex Heeney

Unfortunate. Well, fortunately for you, unfortunately for me, Well, I think it's just like they, it portrays in, in hope it portrays them as sort of constantly rushing around to get various expert opinions, to try and figure out what to do to find the right person to do her surgery, like it never stops. They're doing something every day and googling things. And you know, when they're trying to find somebody to help them figure out how to break it to their kids, they go to the hospital, and there's nobody there to help them. And then they end up at like a hospice place that they found a nurse and then they find a doctor to help them just so they get a few opinions. But like nothing about this was simple, they had to make a run around it like you really feel the exhaustion of all the errands they have to do.

Orla Smith

And you feel the anxiety of waiting as well in a way that like I think Ordinary Love more or less kind of jumps from event to event. And because of this film's limited timeframe, you're able to feel like the anxiety of like how long it takes to get certain results. And I mean, one of the complications introduces is like the Christmas setting, whereas as we said Ordinary Love presents a sort of idyllic version of what would happen if you were diagnosed with cancer. And this film is like filled with almost kind of coincidental complications like that one,

Unknown Speaker

I think, it's trying to produce that effect, right. It's just failing at it like in ordinary life, we spend a lot of time in waiting rooms. In fact, waiting rooms and waiting in the cafe in the in the hospital for her to come out of various appointments are sort of a repeated motif in the film, but they don't feel exhausting the way waiting feels exhausting. And hope manages to actually make those moments seem anxiety inducing, whereas Ordinary Love is sort of this tunnel flatness.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah.

Orla Smith

Especially because she has so many things swirling around her like she is questioning her relationship with her husband. She's wondering, like how to bring it to her six children. And she's trying to get the correct results. She's wondering what's going to happen with her career. She's got like other people in her life that she needs to tell about this. And she's wondering when the right time is to tell them about it. And like how that relates to like, when she's going to get results. And like, there's all these things for her to be anxious about. And they're all kind of piling on top of each other. And that's definitely part of why we feel that anxiety in a way that we don't in Ordinary Love, where she has one thing to worry about.

Alex Heeney

And this would have been busy a busy time, even if she didn't have cancer. You know, she's also like wondering, like, Can we hold off telling the kids this before Christmas, so that we can give them like a normal Christmas that involves preparing Christmas, or at least getting someone in to help them get ready for Christmas, and hosting guests and going to other parties and hosting her father, like there's a lot going on, you have the real sense of them having to carve out time to go deal with this stuff, including when they ship their children off to church, all their children off to church, their grandfather so that they can have some peace and quiet to make dinner

Mary Angela Rowe

and for her to get on the phone with her doctor

Orla Smith

Right and taking and she's taking steroids the whole time as well, which is just another thing on top of all these things.

Alex Heeney

I mean, for me, I think I really the sound design, I think is really effective. But I felt that really sort of captured what it's kind of like to be in a hospital, the sort of loud sounds of doors and equipment and the way that it's often jarring when they cut to it in the film. And then when you're you know, like being rolled around on your bed, it's like very quiet. Like there's just just the changes in the sound really put you into her headspace, I think and I just felt like it was done in a way that somebody who the person who's done this has like been in hospital before.

Orla Smith

And I mean, another thing related to like, how one of Ordinary Love'ss biggest problems is the lack of character and the characters. Hope's characters are very full of character and specificity. But you can also see their character kind of everywhere around them, like they have this apartment that is full of like the life of themselves and of their six children. And I mean, there's so much detail in the background that it feels I mean, you told me that it was kind of modeled after the directors own apartment.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, they made it it was a set on a studio in in Sweden. But Andrea said that she lives in the same part of Oslo and nd she kept forgetting that she was in Sweden when she was in that apartment,

Orla Smith

And didn't Stellan Skarsgård say that he sort of got in that set and he was like this is exactly what it's like to have like too many kids. He didn't say too many.

Mary Angela Rowe

That was implicit

Alex Heeney

Maria Sødahl Maria said also that they did all this research on mess, and how to make mess look

Mary Angela Rowe

authentic

Alex Heeney

warm and happy versus destructive. And so how they could set up the apartment so that it's sort of a warm mess, rather than a toxic mess.

Orla Smith

Like, I didn't look at that apartment and think god, this is a tip. But I looked at it and thought like, there are things everywhere in a way that it just feels real to like, so many people occupying the same space and having all their different things. It didn't feel like it was sort of like very designed and unified. It felt like you know, eight different people in one space, but who are all part of sort of the same milieu

Unknown Speaker

Some of the children have their own personalities. And those come out in distinct one or two comments like they're clearly literally spoiling their youngest child he's going to grow up to very annoying if they don't fix that. And each of the children, even the older ones who weren't named or who were named once, like you get enough about them to make them feel like real people who have real relationships with their parents and with their siblings.

Orla Smith

Yes. And you also like get a sense of the different dynamics between the children who are like biologically her own children and the ones who aren't. So there's also those divides within that family unit.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, and you really see that in the the weddings reception scene, I guess when they're being toasted at the table, and they're talking about how they fell in love. And it was inevitable that they got together and the his children are kind of like yeah, and that was really painful for us.

Mary Angela Rowe

You just get a shot of his two older sons and one of them like puts the hand on the others arm and they're just sort of like the time and the place to deal with that.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. Yeah, they're just they're, I think their home feels like it it's full of warmth and life. and history.

Orla Smith

And you also feel like by the end of the film, you kind of know the home and like all the different hallways and rooms.

Unknown Speaker

One thing that Ordinary Love does, that's very weird in the film, and that makes it feel cold and kind of sterile at moments, which is not what I think they were going for, is having shots of the empty house.

Alex Heeney

Yeah.

I'm not quite sure what they were going for, except to make it feel like the house was uninhabited. But contrasting it with Home was remarkable. Because Home, even the scenes

Hope

Mary Angela Rowe

Hope, sorry, Freudian slip there

Orla Smith

You're talking about the home in Hope

Mary Angela Rowe

Precisely there we go. Because you're exactly right, Alex, that always does feel full of life, it always does feel lived in in a comfortable way.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, I mean, I can think of all the things I don't know about the couple on Ordinary Love. For example, where is their house? I don't think we ever see the exterior of their house

Mary Angela Rowe

Do they read, they have no books in their home.

Orla Smith

Right, and that, I think, from looking at their home, I can glean their class, and not much else. I can glean that they had a daughter, because she is in picture frames. And I said they've kept her room sort of the same, but I can't really tell much else about them from that house. And like, I don't know, like, how far are they from a city or town? Are they in more of a countryside type area, we don't really get the sense of that. And we also only really see part of their house. It's not, as in like, Hope with, again, I feel like we know the geography of that house. I don't feel like I know the same with Ordinary Love. It feels like we know, a couple of rooms.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, it doesn't seem that much like them, their house doesn't have much of a personality.

Orla Smith

Yes, they're either in bed, or they're watching TV on the sofa.

Unknown Speaker

And part of me wonders how much an Ordinary Love that was deliberate to make to sort of universalize them, but the effect is to make them kind of flat.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, I think something Orla said, when we were talking about it is that Ordinary Love is sort of designed so that you can project yourselves onto these characters.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I think what I said was that I can see you getting, as it can see that the people who would get the most out of this film are people who have been through a similar situation, because then if you've been through a similar situation, you can project your own character and your own specificity on to like the details that they're going through. But if you haven't, then there's not much to project onto it. Because there's not much there. Whereas in Hope, even if you haven't had cancer, or like been close to someone who's had that who's had cancer, you can, I mean, it's a relationship film, there are so many details in that relationship. And plus, the characters are so specific that you almost don't need to project yourself onto it to get something out of it.

Mary Angela Rowe

Should we talk about the central performances?

Unknown Speaker

Yes.

Orla Smith

Well, you interviewed both of them.

Alex Heeney

Oh, in hope?

Orla Smith

Yeah. And I interviewed one of them in Ordinary Love. I mean, I guess, I can talk about Ordinary Love for their great actors. And there's nothing really for them to sink their teeth into. And it's like when I interviewed Lesley Manville so I feel like there was only so much I felt I could ask about this film. Eventually, I started asking her about Mike Leigh, and even brought up her like, for example, her performance in Secrets and Lies is one scene. And I felt like oh, I know everything about that woman just from like, the way she's acting in this one scene. And there's nothing to know about the woman and Ordinary Love. Because again, the film is sort of afraid of specificity. So I don't really have much to say about their performances. And I think like, if you've got, like talented actors in a film, and you don't have much to say about their performances, that's kind of indicative of a problem with the film. When the opposite is kind of true with hope. I thought there's so much to those characters, and both actors play so well. I mean, one thing they did, like an Ordinary Love is like the way they kind of very quickly established that intimacy between the two of them. In just the first scene together, they're watching TV and having a discussion. And they're not looking at each other, which that does sort of look into the TV, which kind of indicates is intimacy that they have that they kind of don't need to be in like an intense lock eye conversation to feel close to one another. They're on two different sofas, but their feet twisted together, on like a foot rest. And it kind of gives you the sense of this couple who have like they know what's comfortable to them, they want their own chairs, but they still feel close. That's not because like they feel a distance between them. They are settled into their routine. They know what works for them and this relationship. So just from that instantly, you know what you need to know about the couple, but again, there's only so much to learn about the couple. So I don't feel that performances that necessarily deepened as the film goes on.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, I agree with that. Also, like Liam Neeson has a monologue to his daughter's grave which made me roll my eyes. Not that there's anything wrong with this performance is just very like, here's my Oscar speech, here's me Oscar clip.

Orla Smith

And I just think about how the film was made did feel sort of much more conventional than Hope in the sense that you do have seen sort of sort of like, this is the emotional scene and then you have scenes that are like that kind of like have dramatic music over them for not really any particular reason, especially for a film that's kind of about mundanity, which would have kind of worked in an almost more low key style. Whereas in Hope, dot dot dot

Unknown Speaker

In Hope, even though it's a honest, the main character, and b, it's the story of their marriage. So the two of them occupying the bulk of the film, one of the things that I felt was that the cast felt very well rounded. This felt believably like a family, you see them horsing around, and the casual way they touch each other and the casual way they reach over each other at dinner, like they're all extremely used to inhabiting the same space. And like, it's no big deal to be right up at each other as you they don't have any kind of the personal space bubble that you do with even people who are not your family.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, they all get together into a family sculpture.

Mary Angela Rowe

Yes. Except for Grandpa, who is nope, I have an ounce of dignity.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, I mean, I think what Andrea Bræin Hovig is doing is like really versatile stuff. She has to carry a lot of contradictions. And on top of that, her body being out of control? Yes. Like when she steadily has to eat constantly, in order to get rid of the nausea.

Mary Angela Rowe

Yeah, she has this way of kind of stuffing food into her mouth one mouthful after another, not chewing one until she takes the next one. Yeah, like it almost looks uncomfortable to watch.

Unknown Speaker

But you see, you know, she's sort of angry at her husband. She's also angry at the situation. She's anxious about the situation. She's worried about her children. She loves her children. She loves her husband, but she is having a hard time. There's uncertainty. There's like, what's going to happen with my career? Like all of that is completely embodied and obvious to us throughout the entire film, even if she never says it.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. Like she never really says a word about her career. Other people make oblique mentions of it.

Alex Heeney

That's true.

Mary Angela Rowe

But she doesn't talk about the resentment or the fear that sort of there that it's not fair to happen now.

Alex Heeney

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker

And I think it was pretty meaningful to me that this movie about a marriage and be cancer opened on her and on her career and on her career at what appears to be the upswing for her

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, the structure is very smart in that way.

Orla Smith

Yeah. Even though that, as he said, she doesn't really talk about her resentment explicitly. I mean, that's also kind of part of her character, you get the sense that she's someone who sort of like, like, as with the scene where she gets her diagnosis that establishes that she's a sort of person who she gets bad news and her immediate response isn't to, to, like, be upset, it's to be like, Okay, this is happening, how am I gonna deal with this practically? She's very practical on that way. And so you have to kind of feel that resentment without her stating it, because she's so preoccupied with getting practical things done and moving forward, that she doesn't sort of let herself have a moment to grieve the life that she could be having instead,

Alex Heeney

I think that scene with the hospital chaplain where she's narrating when they wanted their marriage, yeah, yeah, the like, when they thought about getting married, when they changed their mind, that's one of the places where you, you feel like it's brilliantly done, because there's affection in it, and also a lot of resentment. And also just kind of not even necessarily that the resentment on the surface is just the way she narrative vises. It has resentment built in the fact that it, I can't remember what exactly, he says, but he's sort of like, well, you describe our life as though it's like a series of things to get through, or something like that. And that's not what it's like, and she's like, well, I lived a different life than you how to use it. And that just that line, that I lived a different life from you, which is something that we felt throughout the whole film, you know, if he had gotten sick, the family wouldn't have collapsed wouldn't collapse, necessarily in the same way as if she gets sick. Because we feel I think we are made aware of all of the emotional labor that she's doing both because we see her doing it in the background and because of how it's directed and written and the structure of it, so we're aware of that sort of resentment, which she's playing, but she isn't over. Please, like, She's such a complex character. There's so much going on with her.

Unknown Speaker

Well, it's almost a kind of brisk way she delivers that monologue. There's no plea for pity in there. There's no sentiment and there's no sort of wistfulness about, oh, we didn't get married. You just want a very like, this is how it is.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. That's a very good way of putting it. It's it is in the pacing.

Unknown Speaker

There's something about that that like note of defiance in the way she plays it. It's like this is the first time she's saying all this to her husband too, and it feels from her performance, it feels like she's taking this almost as an excuse or an opportunity to air grievances that she's never felt able to air. It doesn't feel like this is a process or a series of decisions that they've gone through together. And it's she's got that sort of, I know, I'm talking out of school a little bit by saying things this way by portraying it in this not trying to gloss over any of our marriage for this chaplain, this third person, don't you think?

Unknown Speaker

I mean, I guess they do a lot of that in this film of not talking directly to each other. Like, when he decides he wants to get married. He doesn't ask her first he says to the doctor, can we get married before the surgery? And then afterwards, she says, was that a proposal? And she's quite angry about it?

Mary Angela Rowe

Also, worst proposal, like very bad? Yeah, go back and try it again.

Unknown Speaker

I mean, that's also part of what makes the performances so good. And what makes the film rich is that they have to interact with a lot of different people, both people that they know and people that they don't know.

Mary Angela Rowe

And everybody knows that their marriage has problems, like no one knows. any illusions that she is the competent one. And Thomas just sort of wandered off and works.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. But you learn, I think that's part of like you learn a lot about them, because you get to see them each talking to their closest friends. And yes, you get to see them with the family, with her father, with with the various doctors with the like random people they don't know that they encounter, like, well, not that the chaplain is random. But you know, like, there's a lot of people that they interact with. And so the different ways in which they hold themselves and perform their marriage or perform themselves to different people, tells you a lot about what's going on with them. And so they're kind of like constantly code switching almost throughout the film, which gives us a lot of access into their inner life, even when they're not saying things.

Unknown Speaker

There's that one moment where after Anja has received the news that the cancer has not metastasized to her lungs, which is like the lone piece of great medical news she gets in the film, it's delivered to her by a young female doctor. And Anja, I think goes to the washroom to clean yourself up. Because she's just so relieved, she starts bawling. And she comes back, and we see her observing Thomas for a moment. And we see her looking at him talking to this young female doctor. And it's just like, we become acutely aware of the age difference between Anja and Thomas, right. And she's sort of looking at this conversation and seeing how she and Thomas used to be in seeing Thomas's future if she dies. And after that is when they have the conversation in the car where she says, I take it back, I don't want you to find someone after I die. If I die. And like nobody says any of this, it just becomes evident in sort of the way she looks at him.

Unknown Speaker

I guess we get a lot to you about the way that they talk to each other when they're in bed together. Because it's quite intimate. The way they just talk. And she's fairly open about how she's feeling.

Unknown Speaker

That's a nice sort of nice point of comparison between these two in ordinary love. I mean, Anya and Thomas clearly have a marriage that has problems, capital P problems. But they're very frank with each other. Yeah. Whereas Joan and Tom, in Ordinary Love, have a marriage that is clearly very comfortable. And they say a lot of things without saying them. But part of the point is that they don't say them

Unknown Speaker

but you get a real sense. And this is also partly in the production design, I think is you get a real sense of how much both of them passionately care about their careers and how they both really do have passions.

Orla Smith

They separate people from each other, in contrast to Ordinary Love, as we were talking about how they just feel like a unit that we don't really get a sense of who they are, aside from each other. And also their careers are incredibly important in Hope, yeah.

Unknown Speaker

Do we ever find out what Thomas does? Like he's currently in, in the arts in some capacity.

Unknown Speaker

He's a producer, okay.

Mary Angela Rowe

But of what

Alex Heeney

Plays I assume, because he goes into the theater to cancel the production or postpone it?

Mary Angela Rowe

Yes.

Unknown Speaker

I mean, in real life, Maria Sødahl's husband is a film director. He may do other things as well. So he's made lots of films with Stellan Skarsgård so they've been friends for decades.

Unknown Speaker

Do you think the guy, the best man at Anja and Thomas's wedding was a Stellan Skarsgård character standard, because that would be funny.

Alex Heeney

She does not like him.

Mary Angela Rowe

Nope

Orla Smith

I guess I a slight like brief tangent of like how, I think Hope is a film that kind of refreshingly diverges from a lot of cancer movie tropes. Like she doesn't have the cancer friend. And I think obviously, that's very telling of the fact that she like the film was actually made by someone who had gone through this and I did read an interesting article. Also Lilttle White Lies recently written by a writer who had had cancer either like recently or at the time of writing, talking about kind of all the tropes that are kind of wrong, that crop up in cancer movies over and over again. And I do something that this film doesn't do is, I mean, she had in Hope she had, like, she was a smoker, and then she had lung cancer. Whereas in a lot of films with cancer, you see this like tendency for the film to like, try desperately to make sure that it's not

Mary Angela Rowe

The victim's problem

Orla Smith

Exactly. And like so this writer says that mostly we're used to seeing blood cancers on film, because they can strike any age group more randomly and inexplicably, but you know, a lot of like lung cancer, for example, if a character has lung cancer, it's like, oh, they magically had lung cancer. But they never smoked, like in Breaking Bad. She cites like, he wasn't a smoker, but he just had lung cancer. And it's like, oh, well, it's not his fault then. And in Ordinary Love, Joanne even sort of like is the one in the couple who is lecturing her husband about like being healthy and eating healthy. And so it sort of makes sure to shift the blame or like to make sure that you can't place blame on the person who has cancer for them getting cancer, when in reality, if you have lung cancer, like the likelihood is

Mary Angela Rowe

You were a smoker smoked or we're around a smoker.

Orla Smith

And Hope shows that you know, you can have a character who has cancer because she smoked and I feel still feel sorry for her for having cancer. There's that heartbreaking scene where she's like begging her daughter to stop smoking. It deals with that regret really sensitively.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, it just amplifies her regret and her choices. And that because it's a film about choices about the choice to stay with her husband, and you know, like how to deal with like, they're constantly making choices about how to deal with this and what they should do. And then she feels guilty about this choice that she made to smoke. At no point in the film do you go, well, you deserve this, because you chose to smoke, but you understand her why she feels so guilty for having done so.

Orla Smith

Right, it's not anti smoking outfit?

Alex Heeney

Well, no. I don't think it's a pro smoking film per se but I know, but it doesn't make you doesn't treat her as like

Orla Smith

an example.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, you're still if you're like, whose fault is it that she feels that she's having a hard time I would blame her husband more than her smoking.

Mary Angela Rowe

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker

I don't know anything to say about Stellan Skarsgård

Orla Smith

He's very good. I feel like I haven't seen him in like a ton of like really meaty roles. Like when I think of Stellan Skarsgård I think Mamma Mia. And, like having a tiny role in many action films, as the person who says some things to people who then do action

Alex Heeney

It's better than mine, which is Nymphomaniac.

Orla Smith

Right. But and I think it's nice to kind of see oh, yes, Stellan Skarsgård, really good actor who can act.

Unknown Speaker

It's also nice to see that he is a really good actor who can act and not scene steal. Like, this is primarily her movie, to the extent that it's not her movie, it's a two hander. And you never get the sense of anyone jockeying for primacy. Whereas I can't really put my finger on it. But sometimes in Ordinary Love it was like these are two actors who are clearly very used to being the prima donna in the room. And who automatically think they're the important one. And that's not even like a mean thing. They're just used to being the important one in a given scene

Orla Smith

Yeah, whereas Stellan Skarsgård is the guy who's in five minutes of every action movie, Liam Neeson is now the guy who is in every action movie.

Mary Angela Rowe

I guess. What has happened to his career?

Unknown Speaker

I think he's said some choice things that have precipitated his own downfall. But

Mary Angela Rowe

He cry into his piles of money I suppose

Unknown Speaker

But I guess there's a there's a real sort of no ego, no vanity nature to the performances in Hope. They let their characters also be unlikable. But that's kind of what I like about them almost. Yeah, that feels real, like, Oh, I could totally see myself going to those places.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I mean, the two performances that like you especially and like I say, in general have really championed over the last year was Matt Dillon and Lars Eidinger in Proxima. We, yeah, we listed them as two of the best supporting performances of last year. And one of the like, key reasons was that, you know, it's rare to have like, a male actor portraying a role that sort of like really genuinely explores and depicts the character's male privilege while also like depicting them as like a three dimensional and ultimatley like good person. And those two things can coexist and not contradict each other. And it's a very kind of nuanced idea of of male privilege. And there are very few performances I can think of that really kind of do that. And this is definitely one of them.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. All right. Well, that's the end of our discussion of Hope and Ordinary Love. So next week on the podcast, we'll be talking about submissions to the Best International feature category of the Oscars, of which Hope is one of them.

Orla Smith

We will be obviously talking about the films that were nominated. But we're also going to be talking about some of like the possibly even better films that were shortlisted or submitted and not even made the shortlist. So it will be quite wide ranging discussion. And yeah, we have the guest Fiona Underhill, who has been on our podcast many times, on that episode

Alex Heeney

Mary Angela, where can people find you?

Mary Angela Rowe

You can find me @LapsedVictorian on Twitter,

Unknown Speaker

Orla?

Orla Smith

You can find me @orlamango on Twitter and you can find my writing at Seventh Row.

Alex Heeney

And you can find me on Twitter @bwestcineaste. You can find all of us on Twitter and Instagram at @SeventhRow

Orla Smith

Should we should we beg for reviews?

Alex Heeney

Let's beg for some reviews.

Orla Smith

Please give us reviews.

Mary Angela Rowe

If you like our podcasts rate and review it, please it helps us gain new listeners.

Orla Smith

Yes, it's very nice when we get a review and it doesn't happen too often. Yeah. And then what happens if we get a review is we share it among our staff and we all smile and it makes our day and we feel like someone is actually listening to this podcast because it's very difficult to get feedback and we know people listen but sometimes it's hard to remember that and you could remind us

Mary Angela Rowe

if you don't like our podcast, please don't bother writing a review.

Orla Smith

No. And if you want more people to listen to our podcast then write review and then that will happen

Unknown Speaker

Or if you want to give us more general feedback or more detailed feedback we would love to hear from you. If you email us at contact@seventh-row.com. We will absolutely all read it and excitedly so.

Orla Smith

and if you really don't have time to type out a couple words, just write rate us five stars

Alex Heeney

Thanks for listening. That's all for this episode of the Seventh Row podcast. Tune in next week for our next episode with more in depth discussion and comparison of great films. If you liked this episode, please rate and review us on iTunes or wherever fine high quality podcasts are available. And check out our website seventh-row.com where you can find interviews and essays on the best current releases with a particular focus on films by and about women, Canadians, young people and LGBTQ plus people can also find out more about and purchase our ebooks and merchandise on our website. I'm Alex Heeney from all of us at Seventh Row. Thanks for listening