Still Mine

If you haven’t seen Michael Haneke’s Amour (see blog below), then Michael McGowan’s Still Mine will prove a very good film. Craig (James Cromwell) and Irene (Genevieve Bujold) are solid New Brunswick octogenarians confronting their looming senescence together. 

But if you have, this film will seem thinner -- in the rhythm, the performances, the harshness it confronts, the stiffness of the dialogue, the depth of the films‘ respective ellipses, and in its framing of the narrative in social satire -- ooh, that nasty bureaucracy -- rather than in Haneke’s more sweeping depths of personal responsibility. Even allowing for her fading memory, Irene is marginalized in the film,  undeveloped, especially in contrast to the Emmanuele Riva role in Amour. Irene's relations with her children are omitted altogether.

Still, it’s a beautiful, moving film. Much is in the opening shot. In close up we see the grizzled rheumy old man’s hands fumble to fix his tie, an unaccustomed formality. The couple is defined by their hands. While Irene is still connected to reality she gardens. Craig caresses the pew, the harvest table he built her, and spends much of the film exulting in his carpentry as he builds her a small, more serviceable house -- against the local regulations. 

The title resonates: his skills are still his, his will and courage are still his, and he marshalls all he has to retain the responsibility to care for his wife. In the last shot she’s out of touch, fumbling with the scissors as she plans and plans again to trim his hair. With Irene unexplored, even the film is still his.

When the hero bursts into tears at his friend’s funeral we get a rare moment of uncertainty, an emotion not entirely explained. Is he grieving for the fate racing towards his wife and himself or because he didn’t get a chance to correct his anger at his friend, to thank him for having brought in the press’s support of his cause? Otherwise everything is spelled out, even to the happy ending apparently still required this side of the Atlantic.