Moore brilliant

JULIANNE MOORE is almost unwatchably good in “Still Alice”, an average film elevated by its tremendous, gut-wrenching central performance. Ms Moore is always likeable and intelligent—in her Oscar-nominated role as the strung-out porn star in “Boogie Nights”, for example. But never has she been more so than here, as a 50-year-old linguistics professor suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s, an awful disease whose unique horrors we are still barely able to countenance in the elderly, let alone in someone so young.

There is nothing especially brave about the script (based on Lisa Genova's book of the same name) or direction here, and "Still Alice" might suffer from the linearity of its plot were it not for its cast. Alice Howland has a very nice, almost comically tasteful, life. She is a successful academic and author, always impeccably dressed and graceful. She and her husband John (Alec Baldwin, also playing a neuroscientist of sorts, and also on form as a reluctant sufferer by proxy) have a great marriage, an expensive-looking flat on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, a beach house for the weekends, and three beautiful grown-up children. What could go wrong?

Everything as it turns out. Little signs of memory loss are at first ignored, then underestimated. Even when the neurologist (who has not yet given a diagnosis) suggests rather ominously that she should bring someone with her to the next appointment, Alice comes alone, never expecting the worst. “I wish I had cancer,” she weeps later, as the disease begins to take its toll, and it’s easy to see what she means. What will be left of Alice when her mind has fully unravelled, and is left trapped in a functioning body robbed of the intelligence on which her personality previously relied?

The emphasis on Alice’s professional interest in language unfortunately feels just as heavy-handed as the portrait of her perfect life; to try and regain control or at least monitor the loss of it, she writes down words like “cathode”, “pomegranate” and “trellis”, tries to recall them when a timer goes off, then panics when she can’t. But lots of people might forget details like this.

Far more devastating from the audience’s perspective are the personal losses: the moment Alice gets lost at home looking for the loo, the time she forgets she has met her son’s new girlfriend, and the moment, eventually, when she struggles to recognise her daughter Lydia. Kristen Stewart, usually so glum, is actually the ray of light in this film, as the wannabe actress who unexpectedly realigns her life and relationship with her mother when others fall by the wayside. Mr Baldwin’s character is surprising too: neither saintly nor cruel he is a man who has spent decades with a bright, articulate woman, and who is struggling to deal with this painfully slow loss.

Ms Moore’s performance is so subtle, so carefully calibrated, that you might almost miss how good it is the first time round. The demise happens slowly but surely. With each new scene she betrays new losses of memory or confidence with the lightest of touches: a flash of recognition here, a pained awareness of deficiency there. At first, Alice is alert to and humiliated by each small failure, but gradually, fierce resistance gives way to a childish compliance.

In one absolutely excruciating scene we see her watch a video file made by her old self, in which she explains how to overdose when things have got really bad. The current child-like Alice stares with a fond recognition at the self-assured person talking to her from the computer, like a baby might marvel at its own reflection, without really understanding what it is.

Few actresses could pull off such a transition, but Ms Moore does so with such skill and discretion that you don’t quite notice it happening. The face-off between the new and the old Alice as the film nears its conclusion is, like some other aspects of the movie, a little crude. Yet it is also a startlingly clear reminder of just how much has changed, even though the same, essential characteristics of Alice’s personality remain.