Ordinary Love (2019) Focus/Drama RT: 92 minutes Rated R (brief sexuality/nudity) Director: Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn Screenplay: Owen McCafferty Music: David Holmes Cinematography: Piers McGrail Release date: February 28, 2020 (Philadelphia, PA) Cast: Lesley Manville, Liam Neeson, David Wilmot. Box Office: $774,877 (US)
Rating: **
Once again I find myself faced with not liking a film that all the other critics love. Ordinary Love has a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 73 rating on Metacritic. I don’t get it. The movie I saw is boring, depressing and goes nowhere. It moves at the pace of somebody running in place in wet cement and is about as interesting to watch. The only thing that saves it from complete failure is solid performances from both leads. Even with that, it’s still a waste of 92 minutes that could be spent sorting coupons, cleaning grout or rearranging your sock drawer. Anything, root canal included, is preferable to watching Ordinary Love.
Liam Neeson (Taken) and Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) play Tom and Joan, an old married couple with an affectionate relationship. Life has had its ups and downs. Their only child, a daughter, died about ten years earlier. They don’t appear to have any family or friends. There’s a real sadness to their existence. Then Joan finds a lump in her breast. She goes for tests. The results aren’t good. It’s breast cancer. She’ll have to undergo a double mastectomy followed by chemo. The chemo, of course, will make her sick. Tom, ever the dutiful husband, steps us as primary caretaker. It won’t be easy, but love will see them through it.
It’s not as if I missed the point of Ordinary Love. I totally get it. It shows the effect terminal illness has on a couple who already experienced tragedy on a large scale. The loss of a child of ANY age is devastating. This latest bit of bad news brings it all back. It also shows how hard it is for somebody to take care of a critically ill loved one. Everybody is so focused on the patient’s pain and misery, they tend not to notice what those closest to the afflicted are going through. It’s a mix of fear, grief, helplessness, sorrow, exhaustion, resentment and guilt over the anger they feel towards the sick person who is almost surely going away. I get all that. Hell, I went through it with my mother. As such, I should have been able to make a personal connection with Ordinary Love. I couldn’t.
Both Neeson and Manville deliver perfectly measured performances. He conveys exactly what it’s like watching a loved suffer and not being able to do anything other than offer words of comfort. Manville is even better with how she imbues her character with delicacy and strength. She may be suffering, but she can still find it in her to offer kind words to a young woman about to undergo her first chemo treatment. In one truly effective scene, all the negative feelings that Tom and Joan have been keeping bottled up explode to the surface. It’s an honest moment that would mean more in a better movie.
For all its good intentions, Ordinary Love is just too dull and dreary. I know, a movie about a woman with breast cancer isn’t supposed to be vibrant and bright. But it should at least be interesting, right? I struggled to stay awake throughout. It doesn’t really go anywhere either. When it was finally over, I didn’t feel like anything was resolved. Was Joan cured? Is the cancer gone? Or have they both made peace with her imminent demise? Did I miss something? What am I supposed to make of this? I have no idea. At the end, I felt only relief. If this makes me sound shallow, so be it.
