Female friendship is a dynamic that is so rarely touched on screen and even when it is, the topic of conversation usually revolves around men. It’s why the Bechdel Test exists. So it’s worth celebrating a particularly ripe time in both TV and film with shows such as Broad City and Girls and films like Mistress America, Fort Tilden and Clouds of Sils Maria all providing depth and humour to an under-served audience.
Catherine Hardwicke, whose eclectic career has taken in everything from Thirteen to Lords of Dogtown to The Nativity Story to Twilight, moves away from the teenage audience she’s typically aligned with for a London-set story about two besties, played by Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette. As is standard, the friends are both wildly different. Barrymore plays Jess, an earthy, boat-dwelling town planner while Collette is Milly, a brash, glamourous PR executive and the film follows their friendship as it goes through a set of complications. As one of them finds out she’s pregnant, the other is diagnosed with cancer.
And thus, what could have been a charming and funny look at the relationship between two women in their 40s becomes a disease of the week movie. We barely get any time with the two leads before the diagnosis, meaning the basic rules of their friendship, which we are frequently told is strong, fail to register. We don’t really get to see how they connect on a day-to-day basis and we’re informed about their friendship via the lazy art of montage rather than genuine development. The two leads are working from a simplistic script that goes through the chick flick motions without attempting to do anything new.
The film’s one major ace is Collette, who, as ever, is easily the film’s MVP. The script offers her pure formula but she elevates and humanises her journey, offering up a poignant and worthwhile glimpse at a harrowing ordeal. Barrymore is charming, if slightly less effective, while Paddy Considine and Dominic Cooper are lumped with thankless husband roles.
The pop-filled soundtrack and glossy London locales aim to paper over the cracks in the script but just serve to make the film seem even less memorable. It feels like an adaptation of a chick lit novel you’d be ashamed of reading or a loose remake of Beaches, aimed purely at the least discerning of female viewer. Women deserve more than this and so does Toni Collette.
