It may be a short film, but your reaction will go a long way with the heart-jolting dramatic short My Week With Maisy, written by Mark Oxtoby and directed by Mika Simmons. Mrs. Foster (Joanna Lumley) sits gloomily in the cancer treatment room with an IV drip, looking at her flip phone. Nurse Gaby (MyAnne Buring) comes in to check on her. Mrs. Foster mentions that her son is playing house with another man. Mrs. Foster has a problem with that. Nurse Gaby asks her if her son knows she is sick, but Mrs. Foster hasn’t told him. The nurse brings Maisy (Ellie-Mae Siame), a young girl at an advanced stage, in for her treatment. Maisy asks Mrs. Foster if her hair has started falling out yet. Maisy’s has, and apparently, the wigs that the hospital offers are terrible. Maisy laments that the least they could do is not offer them s**t wigs since they are going to die.
Mrs. Foster is taken aback, telling Maisy it is inappropriate to talk about death like that. But Maisy has gotten used to the fact that she is dying and has been taught to face things head-on. Maisy proceeds over the days to talk very frankly about death, as well as saying some of the darnedest things.
There are five stages I went through in my admiration of the power wielded by My Week With Maisy. The first is disbelief, as I couldn’t believe I would ever be so lucky to review something with Joanna Lumley starring in it. Lumley reshaped my world in Toledo in the mid-90s during an Absolutely Fabulous marathon while eating pot cookies with a woman named Gary. Decades later, I discovered her work in the seminal Sapphire and Steel series, adding to the awe. Director Simmons makes fine use of Lumley’s star power with a brilliant opening shot of her face-on in the chair with the IV. This shot stretches on for exactly enough time to milk that recognition of a true screen legend real good.
“Maisy laments that the least they could do is not offer s**t wigs since they are going to die.”
The second stage is resistance because I was worried this was going to be overly saccharine. Usually, this kind of dire subject matter mixed with a cute little kid is mishandled in the go-for-the-throat manner of TV ads for children’s cancer hospitals.
The third stage is surrender, as the superb script by Oxtoby mishandles nothing. When Oxtoby makes me cry, it is earned instead of stolen. The charming script banishes any hint of cloying, as the humor tempers the looming tragedy without a trace of artificial sweetener.
The fourth stage is envelopment, as Simmons creates a self-contained universe of the creamy-colored treatment room, with the days separated by a solid block of cancer ward yellow.
The final stage is entrancement, a deal sealed with me by the magnificent performances of the leads. Siame is totally perfect as the grinning face of demise, hitting every complicated note for such a young actress. Lumley proves why she is an icon on all sides of all ponds with a show-stopper performance. That she has to play the uptight one here is extra juicy, as she completely nails it.
We only have a short time on this Earth, and My Week With Maisy is exactly how you want to spend 18 minutes of it.
"…the humor tempers the looming tragedy without a trace of artificial sweetener."
