American Jess and Brit Milly share a wealth of history since they became best friends in a London Primary School about thirty years ago after Jess’s family moved there from Oregon. We learn about how they have shared every single major life milestone since then …. like kissing their very first boy, and even losing their virginity together, all before the opening credits roll. By the ten minute mark in the movie, an oncologist has diagnosed a lump in Milly’s breast as malignant and as the cancer is in such an advanced stage, she must start chemotherapy immediately.
It however is not going to work out like that, and the main body of the movie is then about Milly’s treatments and how it effects not just her but everyone else in her life. The chemo is not a success, and so it is followed by a double mastectomy, but when even that does not stop the cancer spreading, the outlook is very bleak and they must all deal with the inevitable. By now Milly and her husband have stopped having sex and talking to each other, so she seeks physical solace in the arms and bed of a local hot barmen. Best friend Jess has own issues having finally gotten pregnant after trying for years but now is afraid of sharing the fact that she will be giving birth to a new life with Milly at the same time she is losing hers.
Then there is Milly’s mother, an actress who acts like her life is one long melodrama on and off the stage and she now has to struggle to try and bond with Milly after she had been absent off-touring for most of her life. She is possibly the reason that Milly has such a selfish streak in her, as do Milly’s children who unwittingly get more upset with the fact that her impending death mainly because it means that now their father, who they are not so close too, will have to bring them up.
This very maudlin story is a little like one of those old fashioned ‘women’s pictures’ that heap on the melodrama as the good die young. The trouble is that despite a powerhouse performance by Toni Collette as Milly ….. by far the very best thing in this rather depressing drama that misfires more often than it scores ….. is that there is zero chemistry in any of the relationships. The movie centers on the inseparable life-long friendship between these two women …..hippy Jess is played by Drew Barrymore …. yet on screen there is such an awkwardness between the two, that they seem much more like strangers. The bad casting extends to Milly’s husband played by Dominic Cooper, who although technically is just 6 years younger than Collete seems, and acts, more like her grown up son as opposed to her partner.
There is, as usual, always one scene stealer, and in this instance it is veteran Brit actress Frances de la Tour in a small, but crucial role, as a wig maker who is the only one in this drama who is prepared to deal with the crisis with such refreshing honest.
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (‘Twilight’) from a script by actress-turned-writer Morwenna Banks based on her own radio play, whilst the subject matter and its treatment may be depressing, this rather disappointing movie did at least portray some of the more fashionable parts of London rather tantalizingly.
