Eternal Beauty

This is a good film. I was sort of misled by the trailer. I thought it was a comedy. It isn't. It definitely has some funny moments but it is a lot more than that. Having close experience with mental illness, I found this to be an excellent portrayal of schizophrenia. It was chilling and heart breaking but heartwarming at the same time.

My Review- Eternal Beauty on Prime My Rating- 8/10 I finally got to catch up with Sally Hawkins latest film "Eternal Beauty" and I wasn't disappointed. Sally Hawkins never disappoints me her sensitivity and empathy with broken human souls is extraordinary.

The character Sally Hawkins plays is Jane who, after being left at the altar, has a breakdown spiralling into a chaotic episode of schizophrenia lasting twenty years .

We see the characters in Jane's life (both real and imagined) through Jane's perspective when she's on her medication and when she's not. This provides some very humorous moments and some very confronting moments. At times the phrase came to my mind "Normal is just a cycle on a washing machine " because at times Jane seems much more sane than her very dysfunctional family.

Jane's distant disturbed mother Vivian played superbly by Penelope Wilton in a role so far removed from her Downton Abbey role of Isobel Merton is centre stage as the family relationships collide.

One of the most humorous Christmas family gathering scenes I've seen in years is when Jane triumphs over her two ugly Sisters (inner not outer ugliness Nicole (Billie Piper) and Lucy ( Rita Bernard-Shaw) and the other when said sisters ask Jane to help them act mental to fraudulently claim disability benefits.

Things change for Jane when she begins a darkly comic romance with Mike (David Thewlis), a failed musician and fellow lost soul.

'Eternal Beauty' was not the film's original title. At first it was going to be In Her Oils. This is first seen as the title of a picture hanging in the psychiatrist's office. The picture appears several more times, in different locations - Alice's dining room, the doctor's waiting room, etc. The phrase is also spoken by different characters over the course of the film. The phrase ' to be in one's oils' means to be in one's element and is derived from the Welsh expression, 'Yn ei hwyliau', which literally translates (according to Google Translate) as 'in her mood'.

Eternal Beauty beautifully written and directed by Craig Robert's could be very confronting for some people who have members of their family or friends with mental illness.

I'm so glad films like this are made because hopefully audiences can identify and gain empathy with people experiencing acute mental illness and see the Happy , Glad, Mad and Sad side of life through their eyes.

Based upon the trailer and the streaming service's short description, I dove into this flick expecting another charming and playfully dry independent production that contained much British Isles eccentricity, as I am very fond of such works. What this film soon emerged as is a knuckleball; the baseball pitch that (if thrown right) initially looks like it will be easy to catch but then starts darting, drifting and diving all around, making the pitch very challenging to track and catch. This is a heavy film, but that's a very good thing. Psychosis appears to be effectively captured - uncertainty about what is a delusion and what is reality as well as a strong non-linearity. This makes the film, like a knuckleball, challenging to track. This flick is a challenge that only a certain portion of the populace will want to undertake, but for those who do, it will provide much to ponder regarding psychoses and will linger in your stream of consciousness.

I am pleased that I encountered this work. Hopefully you will be, too.

While I didn't really rate this title very highly at only 7.0 out of 10, I am bothering to review it here simply because of two things. First Sally Hawkins performance as Jane and second, because I can only be all in favour of anything that helps to raise awareness of mental health problems.

I live now in Thailand where there is absolutely zero understanding of, or interest in, mental health issues. Even in Western societies today, there is STILL such a degree of misunderstanding of mental health problems that it is still common for people to think that mental illness is a fall-back excuse for sufferers' "bad" or inappropriate behavior. The cry of "just pull yourself together" is all too common even these days and even among people who should know better, with education about the matter being so readily available to anyone who cares enough to look for it.

"Eternal Beauty" should be a lesson to anyone who has even a bare notion about what mental illness is. Sally Hawkins' portrayal of a young woman suffering from schizophrenia is an object lesson in how that condition affects the sufferer and those around him or her.

This is not an easy movie to watch but that is really the point. It's not an easy condition to live with, either as the sufferer or as family. Sally gives yet another wonderful performance here, just as she did in "Made In Dagenham" and as the wonderful "Maudie". She has quite a distinguished career already at only 44 years of age. She has, I'm sure, an even more distinguished career ahead of her.

Watch "Eternal Beauty". It's a challenging movie but very worth the effort.

JMV

Great acting, believable portrayal of dysfunctional family with varying degrees of mental health issues, rescuers & villains. Thought the cinematography was well so done, colors were faded & cloudy when she was medicated, sights & sounds were harsher when she was more symptomatic. One reviewer gave praise that the strong cast " keeps the comedy buoyant throughout." Comedy?! Buoyant?! 2 words that do not come near my mind when describing this movie. Tragedy, betrayal & pitting family members against each other, not funny or buoyant, everyone is depressed, psychotic &/ or has a personality disorder & is terrible, manipulative, cruel to her. Also the story line wove this thread of purpose throughout, that she was failing because she didn't know her purpose, obviously not the case & was more complicated, but her mother said on her deathbed do you know your purpose? ( have you figured it out yet?) end scene, 20 minutes of the movie left & it's never mentioned again... sloppy script writing.