Cinema has not always had the most sympathetic relationship with mental illness: all too frequently it’s used as a threat or a device to explain a third act killing spree. Eternal Beauty, a dark comedy by writer-director Craig Roberts, is an attempt to redress the balance, to explore life through the eyes of Jane (a jittery Sally Hawkins), a woman with schizophrenia. In practice, this makes for a bold but jarring piece of film-making.
Roberts relies heavily on imagery suggesting a confused reality ( characters are constantly fractured into multiple reflections) but the use of colour is an effective shorthand that clues us into Jane’s state of mind. At first, her coat and her skin tone match the concrete cladding on the local housing estate. Off her medication, Jane’s world is saturated with clashing colours and discord. Neither place, it’s fair to say, is much fun to inhabit.
