You're Not You (2014)
This is a straight forward drama, and an intense one. There are two main characters who are meant to be opposites in most ways. Kate (Hilary Swank) is wealthy, a successful classical musician, well mannered, and surrounded by friends. Bec (Emily Rossum) is struggling in every way: her half-finished folk-rock songs, her iffy friends, her bills, and her who-cares attitude. It's given from the get-go they will meet, and with the doubts of Kate's kindly handsome husband, Bec begins homecare for Kate, who is diagnosed early in the movie with ALS.
So this is really a story of a privileged woman learning about true friendship and caring, shorn of niceties. And of a troubled woman learning she has real worth and can actually contribute in a way that makes her grow. The two are never quite friends—there are things they just don't know about each other, and communication becomes harder through time— but they are absolutely devoted and bound to each other. This is beautiful and truly moving by the end. Tearjerker alert.
This is also a story about ALS, and how to cope, and how maybe to understand what people might need who are dying slowly of this disease—or any other progressively degrading illness. This too is difficult to watch.
Swank is terrific, and scary in her ability to be that victim just when life is all roses. Rossum comes off at first as not believable. Her antics and extreme disregard for things (the blender scene, for those who have seen it) are planted in the movie to make a point, and it almost made me move on. But hang in there! After half an hour the real movie begins, if you will, and the acting and writing all rise a level up.
It must be said that the husband plays an ongoing role here, and also a believable one. He is truly caring and tender, but also flawed. And so you see everyone has flaws, including Kate, who recognizes them in herself as much as others. Which gives it all the nuancing this movie needed to work.
It works. It isn't a surprising, twisting, drama by any stretch. Rather, it settles into telling us about a part of our real world with sensitive, beautiful detail.
