Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Emily Atef
Starring: Vicky Krieps, Gaspard Ulliel, Bjørn Floberg
Illness and loneliness - say the words quickly and they blur into one. The
homophonic aspect of both maladies is ironic: even if you are lucky enough
to have love and assistance during sickness, the ordeal is intractably
isolating. Yes, support exists, and people do what they can, but in the
end, it's you and your sickness and the cold dark of uncertainty. Your
pain and suffering, and your brave face pasted over it all.
What a potentially sombre start to the year Emily Atef's (with
writing duties shared with Lars Hubrich)
More Than Ever offers, then. Vicky Krieps plays
Hélène, who lives the bourgeois dream with her handsome husband Matthieu
(Gaspard Ulliel - in an extra layer of sadness,
More Than Ever was the penultimate film the actor completed
before his untimely death in 2022) in Bordeaux. A dark cloud appears on
the horizon, and Hélène’s medical scans, when she is diagnosed with a rare
lung disease. With clipped French practicality, a doctor informs the
couple that survival of prospective surgery has a 50% success rate, and
that Hélène's quality of life will be drastically limited without an
operation.
At once, there is the immediate malady for Hélène to comprehend, but also,
as these things never come alone, there is too the prospect of a stolen or
severely truncated future to negotiate. To demonstrate,
More Than Ever opens at one of those dinner parties which
people like Hélène and Matthieu frequent to share their burgeoning
potentials with peers. A woman bangs on about her pregnancy, triggering
Hélène to leave in tears with Matthieu helplessly following. Its not just
what you'll lose, it is also what you can never have.
More Than Ever depicts illness and that attendant sense of
being in life's shadow with an unflinching but unceremonious camera.
Naturally, most of the film's compulsive humanity rests on the great
Krieps (after last month's
Corsage
it's been bugging me who she physically reminds me of so much: Phoebe
Waller Bridge, obv), but the subtlety of Atef's filmmaking has a magnetic
relatability. There is an absence of contrived drama, and instead Atef
communicates a constant dread which has to be overlaid with simply
"getting on with things": the crushing hallmark of such dire situations
(indulgence alert: the plights outlined in
More Than Ever are painfully close to events which happened
to me last year, with yours truly in the Matthieu role of uxorious but
ultimately useless partner. You don’t necessarily need to have experienced
the sickening rush of seeing the person you care most about in the world
have a terrible time of it to appreciate More Than Ever but
the deeply felt accuracy of the representation is unbearably poignant if
you have. TW).
Matthieu tries, but is eventually alienated by events, going out to clubs
and getting drunk and doing that thing on the dance floor men in films do
when they deliberately rub their hand up their face and into their hair in
order to look a bit forlorn. Meanwhile, perhaps Hélène has found someone
who might just empathise with her situation: Norwegian blogger, Mister, or
Bent (Bjørn Floberg), another member of the midnight club who
documents his experiences with illness online. Bent also happens to live
in Norway, one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Spurred by the
hope of shared experience, Hélène decides to go on a road trip...
From the cramped streets and medical offices of earlier, the frame opens
up into the deep blues and creams which characterise the top of Europe.
Will Hélène find solace in the snowy fjords and cool isolation that
Norvège provides? What do you reckon? Bent turns out to be not exactly how
he presented himself, and the lack of mobile reception means that a simple
text to Matthieu involves a lengthy hike through the snow (there is an
intriguing, and pleasingly unfashionable, subtheme in
More Than Ever which posits online connection as a
superficial relation to its physical counterpart). Perhaps in life the
most devastating truth is that we can never really seek out our own truths
or endings. Welcome or not, such finalities will instead end up finding
us.
More Than Ever is in UK/ROI cinemas from January 20th.
