Something goes wrong in this embarrassing, if well-intentioned film. It’s a clumsy and Kleenex-y issue-movie-of-the-week featuring unrelaxed and unconvincing performances from Ellen Page and Julianne Moore – and Moore comes worryingly close to reprising that faraway look of victimhood from her Oscar-winning performance as a dementia patient in Still Alice (2014).
Freeheld is a fictional version of an Academy Award-winning documentary short from 2007 about Laurel Hester, a much respected gay police lieutenant in New Jersey. After getting a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Hester (played by Moore) petitioned the five governing Republican “freeholders” of Ocean County to change the law, to allow her partner Stacie (Page) to get her pension after her death – like any heterosexual widow or widower would. The freeholders claimed this would violate “the sanctity of marriage”. A mighty battle for equality commenced.
It’s a powerful story told flatly, with performances ranging from the somnolent to the hammy. There is a toe-curling montage showing Laurel and Stacie moving into their new home and fixing it up, interspersed with scenes in the police station next to the whiteboard with the victim photos, etc. One to avoid.
