Milly (Toni Collette) and Jess (Drew Barrymore) are Best Friends Forever. We know this thanks to a flashback that seems hastily assembled. The icky sheen of too many weepie films in the same mould is easily identifiable. But 10 minutes in, a glum doctor tells Milly she has cancer. From then on, director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Twilight) plots a darker, more empathetic course.
While Milly fights the disease that first takes her hair, then her breasts, Jess has difficulty falling pregnant – one struggling to create life, another fighting to hold onto it, a paradox that drives the film (with the aid of much black comedy) through its desperate and triumphant moments.
Barrymore and Collette’s natural on-screen dynamism and intimacy allow their friendship to feel well-worn and authentic. Both characters are believable in their fumbling for the “right” thing to say, failing as anyone else would.
Morwenna Banks’s script (refined from her BBC Radio 4 play) is wise enough not to treat terminal illness in a sanitised, bloodless, Hollywood way. Chemo needles, the bottles that hold the fluid drained from Milly’s mastectomy scars, constant vomiting, bedridden gauntness. For all this honesty, and Collette’s consistently impressive performance, much praise is deserved.
Mushiness and contrivance do occur, however. A scream-filled childbirth scene can be forgiven, but intrusive indie-pop music coerces the viewer towards pre-ordained emotions rather than hinting at them, as many of the quieter, more tender moments successfully do.
If Miss You Already has any kind of message, it is that laughter shared between friends and lovers can be some kind of medicine against mortality, though not a cure for it.
Stars: 3.5/5
Words by: James Robins
