Bellezza infinita

Greetings again from the darkness. There is an odd line early on in which the psychologist says, "Don't fight depression. Make friends with it." What makes this an odd line is that Jane is a paranoid schizophrenic, and depression doesn't seem to be a driving force in her life. Craig Roberts wrote and directed the film (his second feature as director). You might know Mr. Roberts as an actor. He played the lead in SUBMARINE (2010). His approach as a filmmaker is one that keeps the audience off-balance; in fact, we can simply state this one is weird.

Sally Hawkins (THE SHAPE OF WATER, 2017) plays Jane. She lives on her own thanks to medication. Her family is present, though not especially supportive. A flashback takes us to Jane's wedding day where a younger Jane is played by Morfyyd Clark (THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD, 2020). Jane is spurned on her wedding day by her husband-to-be, and it pushes her over the edge emotionally and mentally.

An early scene gives us a peek at current day Jane. She brings wrapped Christmas presents to her parents' house, and promptly hands over the receipts to each family member. She purchased her own gifts, acts surprised and grateful as she opens them, and expects her parents and sisters to repay her for the gifts. It's quite a scene.

We follow Jane through her days as she seems to drift in and out of awareness and reality. She periodically hears her phone ring, and by answering she hears the voice of her former fiancé. The red phones match the phone she was on during her last conversation with him on her wedding day. It's her most painful and visceral memory, and one that Jane can't seem to overcome.

Relationships between the parents and the sisters are quite something to behold. Penelope Wilton (THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL, 2011) is the mother prone to cruelty and confusion, whereas the father (Robert Pugh, MASTER AND COMMANDER) nearly fades into the wallpaper, though seems more empathetic. Jane's sisters Nicola and Alice are played by Billie Piper ("Penny Dreadful") and Alice Lowe (GET DUKED!, 2020). Nicola envies Jane's ability to collect free money (disability), while Alice is estranged from their mother, and claims her "normal" life is boring.

When Mike (David Thewlis from Charlie Kaufman's latest, I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS) enters the picture, it's like a jolt of electricity from touching the wrong wire. Mike is somehow stranger than Jane, yet they manage to connect. As an example of the film's odd dialogue, when Jane asks Mike how things are going, he responds, "Things were looking up for a few weeks, a couple years back." That's the type of exchange we deal with throughout, and it takes an inordinate amount of energy to process what we see and hear.

One shot from cinematographer Kit Fraser is a particular standout. It comes from inside a microwave, replete with rotisserie base and Jane's face peering through the glass. There are numerous moments we've not previously seen or heard in movies ... like the doctor clarifying if the patient is "fine or good". Ms. Hawkins delivers another strange, but affecting performance ... something she has mastered over the years. She always makes the character hers, and makes us care about her. An added bonus is hearing Ricky Nelson sing "I Will Follow You" ... slightly more soothing than David Thewlis' frantic electric guitar performance. It seems certain that filmmaker Roberts agrees that normal is boring, and he ensures his film and characters are not.

The abstractions of mental illness presented in a truly original way with jaw dropping performances by all the cast but an out of this world portrayal of the tortured Jane by Sally Hawkins.

Based upon the trailer and the streaming service's short description, I dove into this flick expecting another charming and playfully dry independent production that contained much British Isles eccentricity, as I am very fond of such works. What this film soon emerged as is a knuckleball; the baseball pitch that (if thrown right) initially looks like it will be easy to catch but then starts darting, drifting and diving all around, making the pitch very challenging to track and catch. This is a heavy film, but that's a very good thing. Psychosis appears to be effectively captured - uncertainty about what is a delusion and what is reality as well as a strong non-linearity. This makes the film, like a knuckleball, challenging to track. This flick is a challenge that only a certain portion of the populace will want to undertake, but for those who do, it will provide much to ponder regarding psychoses and will linger in your stream of consciousness.

I am pleased that I encountered this work. Hopefully you will be, too.

My Review- Eternal Beauty on Prime My Rating- 8/10 I finally got to catch up with Sally Hawkins latest film "Eternal Beauty" and I wasn't disappointed. Sally Hawkins never disappoints me her sensitivity and empathy with broken human souls is extraordinary.

The character Sally Hawkins plays is Jane who, after being left at the altar, has a breakdown spiralling into a chaotic episode of schizophrenia lasting twenty years .

We see the characters in Jane's life (both real and imagined) through Jane's perspective when she's on her medication and when she's not. This provides some very humorous moments and some very confronting moments. At times the phrase came to my mind "Normal is just a cycle on a washing machine " because at times Jane seems much more sane than her very dysfunctional family.

Jane's distant disturbed mother Vivian played superbly by Penelope Wilton in a role so far removed from her Downton Abbey role of Isobel Merton is centre stage as the family relationships collide.

One of the most humorous Christmas family gathering scenes I've seen in years is when Jane triumphs over her two ugly Sisters (inner not outer ugliness Nicole (Billie Piper) and Lucy ( Rita Bernard-Shaw) and the other when said sisters ask Jane to help them act mental to fraudulently claim disability benefits.

Things change for Jane when she begins a darkly comic romance with Mike (David Thewlis), a failed musician and fellow lost soul.

'Eternal Beauty' was not the film's original title. At first it was going to be In Her Oils. This is first seen as the title of a picture hanging in the psychiatrist's office. The picture appears several more times, in different locations - Alice's dining room, the doctor's waiting room, etc. The phrase is also spoken by different characters over the course of the film. The phrase ' to be in one's oils' means to be in one's element and is derived from the Welsh expression, 'Yn ei hwyliau', which literally translates (according to Google Translate) as 'in her mood'.

Eternal Beauty beautifully written and directed by Craig Robert's could be very confronting for some people who have members of their family or friends with mental illness.

I'm so glad films like this are made because hopefully audiences can identify and gain empathy with people experiencing acute mental illness and see the Happy , Glad, Mad and Sad side of life through their eyes.

While I didn't really rate this title very highly at only 7.0 out of 10, I am bothering to review it here simply because of two things. First Sally Hawkins performance as Jane and second, because I can only be all in favour of anything that helps to raise awareness of mental health problems.

I live now in Thailand where there is absolutely zero understanding of, or interest in, mental health issues. Even in Western societies today, there is STILL such a degree of misunderstanding of mental health problems that it is still common for people to think that mental illness is a fall-back excuse for sufferers' "bad" or inappropriate behavior. The cry of "just pull yourself together" is all too common even these days and even among people who should know better, with education about the matter being so readily available to anyone who cares enough to look for it.

"Eternal Beauty" should be a lesson to anyone who has even a bare notion about what mental illness is. Sally Hawkins' portrayal of a young woman suffering from schizophrenia is an object lesson in how that condition affects the sufferer and those around him or her.

This is not an easy movie to watch but that is really the point. It's not an easy condition to live with, either as the sufferer or as family. Sally gives yet another wonderful performance here, just as she did in "Made In Dagenham" and as the wonderful "Maudie". She has quite a distinguished career already at only 44 years of age. She has, I'm sure, an even more distinguished career ahead of her.

Watch "Eternal Beauty". It's a challenging movie but very worth the effort.

JMV