Review: Truly Madly Deeply (1990)
Truly, Madly, Deeply follows Nina, played by Juliet Stevenson. Since her boyfriend Jamie (Alan Rickman) died, she has felt lost and doesn't know how to get past her grief. When Jamie comes back into her life as a ghost living in her flat, Nina is thrilled. But things between the couple aren't quite as perfect as Nina may have once believed...
I love this film. It's such a beautiful portrayal of grief that sends out a wonderful message, thanks to the strong performances of the two leads and a charming script.
Above all else, this really is Juliet Stevenson's film. She is wonderful as Nina, a grieving woman trying to work out how she can possibly carry on with her life after losing some she loved so much. This role was reportedly written for Stevenson, and she truly gives it her all. Nina is shown to be cheerful at work, or with friends, but it's reserved to an extent. As soon as someone brings up Jamie, you can almost feel her coiling up inside herself, and see the guilt she feels for having dared to be happy without him, or worse: the guilt of forgetting him, if only for a moment. For the first half hour of the film, you can tell that when she appears happy, she doesn't entirely feel it, but it's a mask she's putting on so that she can get by. When she cries though, it's devastating. This isn't pretty film crying, where at best you get a tear going down either side of a persons face, yet their voice still sounds normal. Stevenson isn't afraid to let go here. You can hear her nose clogging up with snot, and in one scene the backs of her hands are wet from where she's been wiping them against her eyes or dripping nose. It sounds ugly, but then, grief can be too. Nina progresses beautifully as a character in this film, and I really enjoyed watching her all the way through.
There are mixed, but mostly positive feelings about Jamie, Rickman's character. He comes across as irritating and insensitive towards Nina, particularly as you get further into the film, but once you learn why he is acting this way, you can understand why Nina would fall in love with such a man to begin with. Alan Rickman, of course, is great in the role, and shares a wonderful chemistry with Stevenson (the pair were friends for many years until Rickman's death in 2016).
Michael Maloney plays Mark, a potential love interest to Nina. He is a sweet, geeky man who works with additional needs adults (and yes, they thankfully cast actual people with additional needs for those parts). Mark's introduction is one of the most bizarre character entrances I think I've ever seen in this genre, but I enjoyed it. While I like the character, I think he and Nina could have done with a bit longer onscreen together, to really establish any true connection they might have. Despite that, I am happy with where Mark, Nina and Jamie end up by the end of the film.
The supporting cast is also strong, although their characters aren't particularly relevant to the main story in any way. However, other cast members worth noting include Bill Paterson (perhaps best known right now as Dad in the TV series Fleabag) and Christopher Rozycki, who is fun as Titus, a Polish man who expresses romantic interest in Nina.
The script by Academy Award winner Anthony Minghella (who also directed the film, and also wrote and directed The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley), is simple but strong. I adore the message this film puts out, but I encourage you to go and watch it to learn it for yourselves.
The film isn't entirely without flaws, however. The logic of ghost Jamie is somewhat confused, e.g. he blows onto his fingers to warm them up and comments that Nina smells good, when he shouldn't have breath or any of his five senses left. The film can feel a little slow at times, particularly before Jamie's return, although I think this works to capture the depth of Nina's grief. Jamie and Nina do have a couple of cheesy moments (notably a song sequence) but ultimately, after a long period of mourning for someone, it makes sense that Nina would almost be drunk with happiness when the person she thought she'd lost comes back to her.
Most of my time running and writing for this blog has focused on the typical chick flick: dumb films brought to us by Hollywood producers who believe women are as dumb as the content they think we deserve. It's easy to watch those films and analyse them, because romance and women are generally depicted so horribly, you can pick them apart at once. But after being pleasantly surprised and horrified in equal measure by The Twilight Saga recently, I've realised that I don't solely want to critique those kinds of films alone. Chick flicks generally have a bad reputation, where at best they are fluffy, guilty pleasures. I want to make an effort to bring attention to a smaller category within the chick flick genre though, that category being "films for women".
By definition, chick flicks are films about women, aimed at women. While chick flicks are very much about romanticising situations (often to the point of fantasy, which isn't always a bad thing), films for women follow women who feel like real people. They have jobs that we actually see them do, they have friends who they don't just talk to about boys (but it's not a crime if they do come up in conversations, my insincere apologies to the Becdel test), and the relationships feel real. They aren't always easy, but instead we see two people trying to make things work between each other because that's love and they think the other person is worth the effort. Hollywood might be dull if every woman-led romance film was like that, because as I said before, a bit of fantasy isn't always a bad thing. Yet this film about a woman reuniting with her dead, ghost boyfriend is one of the most seemingly real films I have seen for a long time, and I am grateful for it. I highly recommend Truly, Madly, Deeply to you.
THE SCOREBOARD
Total: 5
Is this really a chick flick or will men like it too? I think this is a film for everyone.
Would I recommend this film? Yes.
Quote of the film: (on the subject of living people left to mourn for deceased loved ones)
"And yet the capacity to love that people have, what happens to it?" - Jamie
"I don't know." - Nina
"I blame the government." - Jamie
Film rating: 9/10
