Mum's List

This is a delicately touching film about a young woman who is battling a particularly pernicious cancer and of how she, her husband, two young childen and her wider circle of friends and family all have to deal with the closing stages of her life. Based around true events Kate (Emilia Fox) is diagnosed and together with childhood sweetheart-now-husband "Singe" (Rafe Spall) we share some of their initially hopeful, but ultimately fated battle; sometimes by retrospective from the courting days; sometimes real-time, sometimes post mortem. The narrative is cleverly constructed and the two leading performances are strong, poignant and convincing. At times, it does run bit to sentiment - but that lends authenticity to the acting; we do get a sense of the optimism/hope/reality/despair/frustration - all the gamut of emotions that people going through this most horrendous of experience must go through. That sentiment, is not, however, gloopy and sweet - sure there are some cheesy scenes; especially when they are courting; but again that just seems to make the thing that much more plausible - it's about two real folk! it's a tough watch, but I reckon it's as good an attempt to encapsulate the trauma of this kind of scenario as I've seen in a long time, and it not devoid of humour either...

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