Still Alice (2014)

Directed by: Richard Glatzer / Wash Westmoreland
Country: USA

Movie Review: Julianne Moore stars in “Still Alice” as Dr. Alice Howland, a Columbia linguistics professor who has the life she always wanted: a brilliant career, a stable marriage and three beautiful adult children. In the day after her birthday, after reuniting the family in NY for a cozy dinner, she flies to L.A. to give a lecture, taking the opportunity to see her daughter Lydia who lives there and with whom she maintains some crispation. The lecture didn’t go as smooth as usual, since Alice forgot what she had to say in a crucial part of her presentation. Constrained but not giving a special importance to that fact, she returns to NY. Her worries will increase when, while running on campus, she started feeling disoriented and lost. The visit to a neurologist confirms Alzheimer disease in a rare variation, which also can affect her children. As expected, the drama intensifies itself as the time passes, bringing a scary new scenario, which at the same time feels familiar due to the recollection of other movies about the same subject matter, like “Iris” or “Away from Her”. Moore conveys the intense fear, stress and struggling of a clever woman whose mind is going away too fast. To quote her own words: ‘I’m learning the art of losing everyday. We become ridiculous, incapable, comic – but this is not us, this is the disease’. It’s impossible to stay indifferent in face of Alzheimer’s, however I didn’t develop particular feelings for Alice or her family, which seemed always a bit detached to me. The pair of filmmakers, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, don’t explore tears, which is positive, but “Still Alice” lacks the proper emotional impact to involve us. Competent, though.