[critical] STILL ALICE

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n two occasions, in STILL ALICE, dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is seen in the mirror of his bathroom. The second time, however, it does not recognize. It is thatAlice, a professor recognized of linguistics at Columbia University, was diagnosed with an early form of Alzheimer’s disease, which made him gradually lose touch with reality. The woman she sees there, with his hair unkempt and dazed, this is not it, but someone else.

As a long descent, we saw Alice forget first names and addresses, and then forget to return to the house after his jog and forget that she saw someone a short time before. And then the loss of autonomy, inability to dress herself, incontinence, John her husband impotent (Alec Baldwin) and their three children (Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish and Kristen Stewart) who learn in horror that the form of Alzheimer’s which is reached their mother is hereditary and that there is a chance that they’re suffering from prematurely.

Is there a hope even in the midst of such a situation ? Yes, and it is the force of STILL ALICE. Even sick, Alice still lives, she still holds on to the memories. The game of Julianne Moore, decidedly, everywhere in recent times, gives the character a depth and fragility, of restraint, without unpacking of small things or good feelings. In a character who has built his life, his memory, and who sees it slowly disappear, it excels and spark. Of course, this is not his best role (for me as I have worshipped in The Hours, Far from heaven or A Single Man). But it inspires when even respect. It plays raw, a tour de force for a benefit that could be summed up only to draw tears from the public.

If the interpretation of Julianne Moore is solid, the film, however, is significantly less. It avoids the mawkishness but it falls necessarily in awareness. Normal, with a subject as serious. The film becomes at times a kind of appeal for donations to find a cure to the disease of which it treats. We saw the touching scenes of miles and it knows when the public will be assumed to have teary eyes or getting up, shouting ” I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore ! ” (a pure reference to cinema). Alec Baldwin, that I appreciate, however great, has the dramatic potential of a trucker in a truck stop. It is bland and disappointing. As for Kristen Stewart, in command of Lydia, she returned to a role in Sils Maria, the young actress a little clueless, which attempts to break through, supported by an older woman (it was Juliette Binoche with Assayas, this will finally be her sick mother here). And she definitely seems more comfortable in reading texts that are in incarnation. It has the force of repetition, it may well ruin a talented actress who has yet to prove (to clear a little of his image Twilight).

”Julianne Moore is the face of it, all the power of STILL ALICE”

Julianne Moore is the only one that supports really all so. If we should retain only a single scene, one that would encapsulate the film and make it worthy of attention, this would, in effect, this dialogue between Alice and itself, while the latter, already diminished, is looking at a video of herself recorded a few months earlier on his laptop. It is at this moment that one becomes aware of what “losing its identity” means : to speak to oneself in order to save the last remaining broken pieces of a life. Julianne Moore is the face of it, all the power of STILL ALICE. The film of a single character, who in the end does not even know that he is the hero. The Oscars have appreciated.

Tom Johnson