SUPERNOVA

The focus of this gentle movie doesn’t always lie where it should lie, but the flaws of the quietly meandering script are mostly erased by charming Stanley Tucci and Colin Forth performances.

Not a lot happens in the first hour of Supernova, an amiable character drama about a gay couple who go on one last road trip before one of them will be crippled by dementia.

While the chemistry between Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci, who do a great job suggesting a lifetime of shared memories, keeps you invested in those first sixty minutes, the lack of narrative propulsion is definitely a problem for the film.

And then, just when you think the picture will continue to babble like a small brook till the end credits, something does happen to set up a third act that is filled with thought-provoking if still rather understated drama. If Supernova has one fatal flaw, this is it: the issues raised in that final half hour should have been the catalyst for the second act, not the third one, in order to be explored in more detail than writer-director Harry MacQueen does here.

The efforts of Firth and Tucci deserved more than a hastily handled denouement that truncates a heart-wrenching decision to just a few ambiguous glances and sentences.

release: 2020

director: Harry Macqueen

starring: Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci, Pippa Haywood, Peter MacQueen