The subject of this film, Dr. Audrey Evans, a pediatric oncologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), is nothing short of inspirational. It's quite realistic to think of her as Mother Teresa with an MD. Like Mother Teresa, Evans was devoutly religious and believed deeply that she was put on earth to care for children.
The story begins in 1969, when Dr. Evans has been recruited to CHOP after spending a few years at the University of Chicago. Overcoming innumerable obstacles, she and a couple of colleagues eventually developed a staging system for neuroblastoma, the most common pediatric cancer. As a result of Dr. Evans' work, treating children with neuroblastoma for the first time could be customized based on the patient's disease stage. Dr. Evans sense of humanity and her complete devotion to her patients make the title of the film entirely accurate.
"Audrey's Children" grew out of an interview in 2017 conducted by Julia Fisher Farbman (who wrote the script here) and Dr. Evans for the Amazon series "Modern Hero." Farbman was so impressed by her subject that she produced this film, raising all the funds from private sources. Because of the shoestring budget, the film had a shooting schedule of 23 days.
A key strength here is the film's accuracy and intense attention to detail. After the "Modern Hero" interview, Farbman spent many hours with Dr. Evans, who passed away in 2022 at age 97. The story is historically accurate and meticulously told. The Oncology Department at CHOP has publicly endorsed the medical accuracy of the story.
When filming, Director Ami Canaan Mann was equally attentive to detail. To ensure that the story was visually grounded in the time period, she used 35mm Ektachrome film. (HBO's "Euphoria" and the film "Poor Things" used the same cinematic technique.) As a result, the colors here are highly saturated and very high-contrast by today's standards. The production design (Amber Unkle), set design (Kimitha Cashin) and costumes (Sarah Maiorino) are equally faithful to the period (1969-1974).
What keeps the film from soaring is the script. There's no dramatic tension anywhere to be found. While there are occasional references to the misogyny Dr. Evans endured, there's nothing here that really gives the story any momentum. The film labors under the additional burden of its overarching theme: childhood cancer. Capturing vignettes of families who know their children are going to die (the mortality rate for childhood cancer in 1969 was 90%) involves some very heavy lifting. Efforts to generate a propulsive narrative are further weighed down by a script that necessarily involves a lot of medical terminology. When the central scenes involve debating which clinical features define the four stages of neuroblastoma, the creative team and the audience clearly have their work cut out for them. Before seeing this film, purchasing a copy of the latest edition of "Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary" might prove to be a good investment.
I wish I could be more supportive of this admirable attempt to lionize a modern-day saint. I also wish the creative team had channeled their energies, their work ethic and their good will into a first-rate documentary. As a drama, this film doesn't do her justice.
