My feelings are pretty mixed about Ordinary Love. First, I’ll start by saying everything that took place in the film, for the most part, happened to my wife and me. I can attest to the film’s accuracy. It was hard watching the movie without thinking about my own experiences. The scenes are just a little too real for my wife to sit through.
As the film moves along, it begins to feel like an afterschool special as it ticks through all the checkboxes of cancer stories. This includes the mind games as Joan fears the worse and Tom is cautiously optimistic about her chances of survival. Add to that Joan losing her hair…then her breasts. Tom finds support from and gives encouragement to Peter’s partner, Steve. It’s not all a bed of roses either, Joan’s loss of energy from the chemo and the intense post-surgery pain that sparks arguments, frustration, and exhaustion in the couple. Moments that I know all too well.
“…a great resource, and it feels like an amalgam of collective experiences with cancer.”
On the upside, Ordinary Love is a great resource, and it feels like an amalgam of collective experiences with cancer. The problem is the story feels rather academic and sterile at times. The story of Joan and Tom comes off as generic. Other than their daughter passing years before, there’s really no back story to Tom and Joan, other than they live in Northern Ireland. So, this story comes off as bland.
The best cure for a bland movie is quality ingredients, and in this case, it’s Manville and Neeson’s performances. They both come off as real and authentic and justifies the story being told on the big screen. Neeson plays regular guy very well, and at no point do you feel like he’s going grab a butter knife and dispatch justice.
Ordinary Love is an authentic story about the fight with breast cancer. If you want to see great actors portray average people face with a life and death scare, then this is your film. If you’re looking for a little more drama and high stakes conflicts, you won’t find it here.
Ordinary Love screened at the 2019 San Diego International Film Festival.
"…Neeson plays regular guy very well..."
