Away from Her

Twentysomething Canadian actress Sarah Polley also proves to be a talented screenwriter and director in her first feature Away from Her, a sensitive study of a couple torn apart by Alzheimer's disease, based on Alice Munro's short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent star as Fiona and Grant Anderson, an active older couple who enjoy cross-country skiing, but Fiona's memory is failing, and she decides to enter a nursing home, despite Grant's reluctance over the 30-day separation that the facility requires between new residents and relatives. When the month is finally over, Grant turns up—flowers in hand—to find that Fiona not only doesn't recognize him but is now devoted to a mute and wheelchair-bound man named Aubrey (Michael Murphy), with whom she's struck up a codependent relationship. Grant is left feeling both rejected and a bit jealous, but is forced to look even deeper into his heart when Aubrey's wife (Olympia Dukakis) takes her husband home, and Fiona falls into a deep depression. While this material could have easily descended into mawkishness, Polley successfully avoids sentimentality while revealing the characters' emotional lives—past and present—and she's blessed with a magnificent cast. An honestly touching, if modest, portrait of a marriage affected by a terrible wasting disease, Away from Her is highly recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary with star Julie Christie, five deleted scenes with optional commentary by director Sarah Polley (8 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a fine film.] (F. Swietek)