Distress signals: "Queen at Sea"

We can't be certain that the UK release of Queen at Sea has any direct correlation to Andy Burnham's plan to urgently reform social care, but this sure feels like the kind of film that would significantly shift a needle were someone with the right level of clout to see it. For what is his first feature in 18 years - and only his second in total, following 2008's notable Ballast - the American indie tyro Lance Hammer has holed up in Tufnell Park to monitor a situation that initially presents as awkward-slash-tricky, and then gets grimmer by the minute. The trickiness is this: university lecturer Amanda (Juliette Binoche) and her teenage daughter Sarah (Florence Hunt) show up one afternoon at the home Amanda's mother Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall) shares with her second husband - and Amanda's stepfather - Martin (Tom Courtenay), only to discover Leslie and Martin in the bedroom, engaged in an act of congress. This would merely be regrettably awkward, except that Leslie has been diagnosed with dementia, and so cannot give informed consent; furthermore, this apparently isn't the first time this has happened. A distressed Amanda calls the police, intending to do the right thing, yet - it turns out - making everybody's lives immediately worse. Now there are men in hazmat suits in a marital bedroom designated a crime scene; now Martin is being led away from the woman he cares for in handcuffs; now Leslie is having to undergo a vital rape examination; and now, with Amanda away dealing with the consequences of the above, young Sarah is left to her own devices. At first, it feels as if Hammer is trying to top Michael Haneke's notoriously bleak Amour by adding a prickly accusation of marital rape to the equation, yet there's a key difference. Haneke wanted us to suffer, because we are the unthinking Western bourgeois and we deserve to suffer. Hammer, to his considerable credit, just wants to keep his situation real.

That intense realism is what first strikes you about Queen at Sea, and it is, finally, what keeps Hammer's film on course. It extends to the casting of actual health professionals in literal supporting roles, hopefully earning more per diem than they would in the NHS while patiently, compassionately talking the leads through what they would in the course of their usual day jobs. This isn't some wild stab in the dark as to what the consequences of Martin's actions and Amanda's 999 call would be; throughout, Hammer strives to nail his drama down agonisingly close to the painful truth of such matters. TV's The Pitt received plaudits for a number of episodes that assiduously detailed how a rape kit should be gathered by a trained medical professional caring for a victim in full compos mentis; Queen at Sea's victim, by stark contrast, can't know why someone in latex gloves is prodding at her with unfamiliar instruments, and wouldn't likely understand even if a nurse attempted to explain. One reason Hammer has taken so long between projects is surely that he's seeking such an exacting level of realism you might come away never wanting to make films again - or simply not want to associate yourself with a medium that more generally peddles comforting lies. I started the film vaguely unhappy with the idea that wobbly seniors Martin and Leslie's bedroom should be on the very top floor of a North London townhouse, arrived at by perilous staircases - but Hammer even comes to connect that to the stubbornness of some elders: this pair won't leave this house, nor will they leave one another's side. It is, all told, a thoroughly unhappy situation - and yet at the same time a dramatist's ideal: a situation where everybody on screen appears to be in the right and in the wrong simultaneously. (You be the ref.) Hammer complicates matters further by casting universal grandad-of-choice Courtenay as an accused who is in all other respects a loving, devoted caregiver. Where it gets trickier still is that Martin sees sex both as a marital duty and a potential source of comfort for his befuddled partner: to have and to hold, in sickness and in health. Does a husband necessarily know better than anyone else what his wife wants? Would he know better than trained health care professionals? Again, Hammer hands us the gavel and lets us be the judge.

The conditions for studying these characters could scarcely be any better. Hammer pens them all into small, sparsely appointed frames under flat autumnal light, correctly reasoning these people are enough in themselves to hold the attention, and that they'll soon have problems enough to fill an IMAX screen. Just dramatically, nothing will top Queen at Sea this year: it's a whole series' worth of The Moral Maze, squeezed into two gripping hours. We see that Amanda's giving her everything to protect a vulnerable woman, but also that, in this instance, she may have overreacted (and Binoche, the doyenne of doubt, lets us know this). We see that Leslie is helpless and child-like, but also compulsively needy (such that you have to keep telling yourself that the astonishing Calder-Marshall is simply inhabiting a role to the hilt). We see that Martin is harried and shaken, but also defiantly old-school and possessive with regard to Leslie, carrying a swelling martyr complex that may or may not be justified. And we see that Sarah is away living an existence of her own, albeit without close parental guidance. These latter scenes present as somewhat less compelling, because the sight of two kids filming TikTok videos is automatically less compelling than that of conflicted grown-ups being pushed and pulled every which way. Yet they, too, have a purpose, letting some fresh (if reefer-tinged) air in on a largely domestic story, highlighting crucial generational differences and freedoms, conveying some sense of life going on regardless, for better and worse. Somewhere in here is an actors' ideal, too: every performer gets to fight their character's corner, however tough, shitty or bloody it gets. You very quickly sense this was a film that demanded elevated levels of care and attention offscreen: it's not just that Hammer pushes his veteran leads to go way beyond the boundaries of the average Silver Screen matinee, it's that provision also has to be made for those non-professionals who find themselves on the sharp end of a foul-mouthed Courtenay diatribe or that intense Binoche glare. So consummately good is the acting and direction on a scene-by-scene basis that, towards the end, Hammer almost gets away with finding an easy way out of his initial set-up: he lets himself off the hook, even as the rest of us are set to considering the messy outcome of a heinously messy situation. (Part of the film's honesty lies in its recognition there can be no neat and tidy resolution.) Queen at Sea is not a film anyone will want to watch over and over again: you may be too busy, as Andy Burnham has been, living a comparable situation in reality to want to see it reflected so sharply in your nightly entertainments. But then this is also one film you're not going to forget in a hurry.

Queen at Sea is now showing in selected cinemas.