Zurich Film Festival - Miss You Already

Miss You Already (112 mins)
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Lifelong friends Jess and Milly (Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette) live in London in those ludicrous houses you only ever get in movies; Milly and her husband (Dominic Cooper) live in an East End conversion, Jess and her husband (Paddy Considine) live on a boat. It’s a friendship that’s somewhat foisted on us, told in montage and never feeling organic, but tested early on in this tawdry weepy when Milly is diagnosed with cancer and faces bouts of chemotherapy. To its credit it doesn’t desperately overplay the cancer card, but the problem is that’s the only card it has, though when it keeps attempts at humour it doesn’t fare too badly. Beyond the illness stuff it’s just a bland, soap-standard domestic drama, filmed with handheld cameras to make it appear edgy when it so clearly isn’t. Most of the conflict comes from Milly treating everyone around her badly, and that’s an acceptable angle which comes off thanks to the excellent Collette, far more convincing than the limited Barrymore. Obviously things need to come to an emotional head, and while it attempts to be this generation’s Beaches, there’s no danger of that.