Dir. Nicole Kassell, USA, 2011, Dur. 108 mins
Cast: Kate Hudson, Gael Garcia Bernal, Lucy Punch, Kathy Bates, Whoopi Goldberg
Review by Carlie Newman
Another romantic comedy, but this one has a very serious subject, so not much com. there! Kate Hudson plays Marley, who is young (well, early 30s) and beautiful and we meet her just as she puts on a great performance in the ad agency in New Orleans where she works and is promoted. She enjoys sex and is happy not to be married or in a permanent relationship. When she feels ill, she treats it in her usual light-hearted fashion until she visits the hospital to be told that she has incurable cancer of the colon. The doctor giving her this news is handsome Dr Julian Goldstein. Although Marley is surrounded by very good friends and a demanding but loving mother (well played by Bates), she needs something more, and that is provided by Julian. The two begin a relationship although warned against it by the senior oncologist who advises his younger colleague, “the line is there not just for patients.”
While undergoing explorative treatment, Kate has a vision of Whoopi Goldberg as God perched up in the clouds. When she is asked to make three wishes, she says she wishes to fly, to have one million dollars (that’s $500,000 after tax says Whoopi sagely), but she doesn’t reach the third wish before hurtling to ground again. Later we learn how the first two come to fruition and at the end understand her third wish.
Although Hudson has a nice light touch and manages to inject humour into her conversations with friends and the doctor, Gael Garcia Bernal is not so comfortable with his English dialogue. Besides which, of course, talk about colonoscopies and inoperable tumours does not provide much fun and it would be somewhat callous to laugh. There are, however, some witty moments in the film such as her friend Sarah’s (Punch), “I’m just going to move over there where I can still eavesdrop.”
Most of the performances are competent and Hudson is good-looking and can show emotion quite well. But even when she is having chemotherapy and, particularly, when she is dying, she has a full head of hair (which is medically possible) and her face remains full and rounded, with a healthy hue! There are some excellent make-up artists working in other films ? why not here? Although the episodes where the heroine talks to Whoopi as God are somewhat ludicrous, what is really unrealistic is the idea that a doctor would form a sexual relationship with his dying patient… and get away with it!
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