Now Is Good ☆☆☆½

I think I might be a sucker for a film about a dying girl, these are the ones I’ve wept through prior to this Dakota Fanning movie:

• A Walk to Remember (with Mandy Moore dying)
• Love Story (1970s original weepy)
• Restless (an amazing and original story with Mia Wasikowska)
• My Sister’s Keeper (though not really a love story it ticks most of the boxes)

So with the above list in mind, I’m not going to delve too deeply into the plot, this is the trailer if you’d like to know what the story is about, but really its about Dakota Fanning putting on a British accent and playing a 17 year old who is dying and makes a list of things to do before she dies, but falls for the boy next door in the months leading up to her death.

Along with My Sister’s Keeper, Now Is Good is a film that made me feel faint because of the hospital/brutal reality of the illness. Luckily I was watching NIG at home so could pause to put my head between my knees (genuinely I get quite ill, seeing me give blood is probably hilarious). During MSK I was in the cinema and missed about 4 minutes of the hospital scenes because I felt so awful and had to hide my head somewhere near the floor.

However, aside from feeling poorly, Now is Good made me an emotional wreck. Paddy Considine broke my heart as the Dad, simply called ‘Father’ in the cast list, and just thinking about one particular scene is making my eyes well-up once more. Then again he is a phenomenal actor and now director who is pretty good at tugging on your heart-strings (watch Dead Mans Shoes or Tyrannosaur). But he also could produce some comic relief as the disapproving Dad of the boy next door.

Olivia Williams as Mum was something of a shock, the Mother who couldn’t handle her childs illness and had no idea about hospital appointments, treatments, and avoided as much as she could. She also had extraordinary hair – bottle blonde with some fabulous roots, a clear indication of her frame of mind and where her real worries lie, not with her appearance but with her child.

Onto the dying girl herself, Miss Dakota Fanning as Tessa Scott, the girl who has decided to stop chemotherapy after leukemia returned after a four-year battle. Fanning was demonstrating her ability to do an English accent…and you know it wasn’t terrible. Perhaps a little too posh and clipped sometimes, a lot of ‘yes’ when a more relaxed ‘yeah’ would have been a natural response, but overall if I didn’t know she was from the USA I reckon I could have been convinced. Fanning is a pretty good actress and she dies quite well, I think she must have been channelling her inner Brit to be so deadpan about the whole thing, even her eyes were unforgiving about sentiment.

Jeremy Irvine is the required boy next door, but this one isn’t the jock who needs to be taught a lesson in humanity (A walk to remember) or a strange young man who gate crashes funerals (Restless), Irvine’s Adam has lost his father the year before and has been something of a recluse ever since. Despite the reservations he has he goes for it, cos hey Tessa is a pretty inspirational person. Irvine puts in a much better performance than War Horse…that may be unfair as I have no idea what his War Horse character is supposed to be like but I found him a tad unbearable all the same. So he proved to me he is a decent actor, and he meshed with Dakota quite well.

I really loved Tessa’s little brother, played by Edgar Canham who only has this film to his name. Basically Cal is the kid who makes ‘inappropriate’ comments such as ‘when Tessa is dead can we go on holiday?’ which make Tessa smile because he is the one person who truly accepts what is happening, likely because he doesn’t comprehend the effect it will really have on him and his life.

Kaya Scodelario, of Skins fame, plays the best friend who is helping Tessa tick things off her list, and their friendship was easy and believable.

This is a really good version of the dying girl movie. Restless is my absolute favourite because of the originality of the characters, but this is definitely very good and that comes from a strong cast and an equally strong script and direction. Ol Parker the director and writer keeps a firm hold and does not lose any focus, but also manages to balance the light with the dark very much as he did with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

However if, like me, you are a bit of a weepy person, your tear ducts might get some serious exercise. Like I said above, Paddy Considine broke my heart, I challenge him not to break yours.