Supernova movie review: Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci’s love story will break you
British drama Supernova is a story of loss, but it wouldn’t mean anything if there wasn’t something beautiful like this to lose.
When it comes to dream casting, it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth as the leads of British drama Supernova.
As a gay couple with decades of history, there’s a lived-in quality to their relationship. They bicker, they look at each other with passion and tenderness and they just feel as if they’ve always been together.
Tucci and Firth have been friends for 20 years, since starring together in a film called Conspiracy, and that real, shared history is splashed across the screen in Supernova. No matter what else is going on in the film – heartbreak, joy, mundanity – there’s a cosiness.
That intimacy and familiarity is difficult to pull off but essential to a love story that’s not about the heady first throes of romance but the enduring grace of the last. It’s the spark in Supernova, a quiet and poignant drama about saying goodbye.
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Musician Sam (Firth) and writer Tusker (Tucci) are on a road trip through England’s Lake District, a breathtakingly beautiful backdrop. They’re ensconced in their camper van, chatting about returning to places visited long ago, places with happy memories of a life lived.
It’s soon apparent this isn’t a normal driving holiday. There’s something that’s not said between Sam and Tusker, something hanging over them in the concerned looks, the questions about remembering small things.
Tusker has early onset dementia and he’s deteriorating fast, unable to do many of the banal things we do without thinking, or the things that gives him joy and purpose.
The trip, we realise, is something of a last hurrah, weaving through favourite places, seeing family and friends, before making their way to a performance Sam is due to give.
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Writer and director Harry Macqueen places the audience in Sam and Tusker’s shrinking world, as if to focus that on the one thing that’s become most important to both of them, each other.
They’re frequently in small spaces – the camper van, Sam’s childhood bedroom and single bed – and shot in close-ups. But rather than feeling claustrophobic, the effect breeds intimacy.
And Macqueen allows moments to breathe and settle, rather than quickly cutting to the next scene.
Supernova is an elegiac love story that starts at the end, but Tucci and Firth’s performances are so convincing, you feel as if you were there for all of it. It’s all the more aching knowing it does end.
There’s a line in the film that goes, “you’re not supposed to mourn someone while they’re still alive” and as soon as it’s said, it hits that’s exactly what the deeply empathetic Supernova is eliciting from its audience, something akin to grief.
Supernova is a story of loss, but it wouldn’t mean anything if there wasn’t something beautiful to lose.
Rating: 4/5
Supernova is in cinemas from Thursday, April 15
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