Supernova

"You're still you Tusker, you're still the guy he fell in love with."

"No I'm not......I just look like him."

Words spoken by a heartbroken man at the last party he may ever have. Words that will pin you to your chair.

Dementia is one of the cruelest of diseases. It robs your past, present and future and doesn't even have the common courtesy to kill you during it's ravages. Your memories, the people you love and yourself, everything slowly fades away and you can't do a thing to stop it. Tusker (Stanley Tucci) was diagnosed with it two years ago and things have been going downhill since. Him and Sam (Colin Firth)  have been together for two decades and the drive they're taking across England may well be their last holiday.

The first film shown at the Dublin International Film Festival, which is online this year, is a gutpunch enveloped in love. A look at what everyone in a lifelong relationship has ahead of them and how what really matters isn't the end of the journey but how you spend the time leading up to the big finale. Supernova makes a big deal out of the smaller gestures, the quieter moments, the solitary pain felt by those who'll be left behind, the stuff other showier films would rush by and that's why it's so good, why it feels so real and humane. Big confrontations are skipped over, left unseen, left to our imagination and when it does finally boil over, it feels like a slap. It's a film that will make you smile, make you laugh and then leave you reeling. Often in the same scene. 

There's a small moment about a third of the way into this lean 90 minute (the ideal length of a movie btw) tale where Tusker and Sam are sharing his tiny childhood bed and we get a perfectly performed pratfall. The reaction it is infectious and just like the characters on screen you'll forget about the spectre looming over the film for a moment. Supernova is dotted with slivers like this that help keep the sadness of it all at bay. A niece and her uncle looking at the stars, the joy of a surprise appearance of old friends, an American telling a British accented GPS voice to fuck off, the horror of a elderly dog fart. This tempers the stuff we know we'll dread. A horrible realisation in a van outside a party, a speech that can't be started, the moment early in the film where Tusker becomes disorientated and walks off while Sam is shopping. He's not lost for long but it gives the film a sense of doom that settles in. Supernova, like life, is a series of peaks and valleys and like life of late, the valleys are getting deeper and deeper.

Firth and Tucci are amazing together. They feel real, there's a genuine chemistry and thankfully none of the showy, award baiting you often get when heterosexual actors play gay roles. It never once feels like you're watching acting and both come across exactly how you'd imagine them to be and director Harry Macqueen is smart enough to let them use the screen persona's we know them for to create Tusker and Sam. Tusker, slightly quirkly, urbane, droll and cultured. Sam, quieter, more rigid, dignified, low-key funny. Two people terrified by the future but holding it together as best as they can for the other. Two people you'll empathise with instantly and think about as the credits roll. That's no mean feat in a film lasting only an hour and a half. A real testament to Firth and Tucci's skill as performers.

Supernova may get a cinema release later in the year. If it does it's really worth your time.