Never Steady, Never Still
(Canada, 112 min.)
Written and directed by Kathleen Hepburn
Starring: Shirley Henderson, Théodore Pellerin, Mary
Galloway, Nicholas Campbell, Jared Abrahamson, Lorne Cardinal
 |
| Shirley Henderson stars as Judy in Never Steady, Never Still |
Shirley Henderson, the actress with the squeaky voice, is a
tremendous force in Never Steady, Never
Still. This debut feature from Kathleen Hepburn gives the British actress
an outstanding lead role as Judy, a woman living in oil country, BC, who
experiences a tragic illness because of contamination from the fields. Judy
suffers from crippling tremors having lived with Parkinson’s disease for twenty
years and Henderson finds in the character the same empathy and strength that
Sally Hawkins brought to her performance as severely arthritic painter Maud
Lewis in Maudie. The physical power
of this performance is incredible, but the emotional might is even greater.
Judy’s surroundings and family are also in a shaky situation. Her son, Jamie (Théodore Pellerin, The Demons) struggles with the decision that many kids in rural Canada have to make when they graduate high school: leave home and attend university in the city or stay and begin a life of manual labour. Jamie’s friend is going away to school, but since Judy needs help around the house and her husband, Ed (Nicholas Campbell), can only do so much, the boy takes a job in the oil field. There’s only one hitch: Jamie resists his budding sexuality. Maybe life in the fields will make him more of a “man.”
Never Steady, Never Still
veers into two storylines as mother and son are separated and Judy stays home
while Jamie works in the field. Both characters find themselves unexpectedly
and painfully alone. A tragic loss makes Judy test her physical limits and push
herself daily, while Jamie finds himself a fish out of water in the boisterous
work-hard-and-play-harder mentality among the oil crew. Jamie finds himself in Hello Destroyer territory as toxic
masculinity and flat lighting brew a study in perceived gender roles that finds
notes of potency comparable to Kevan Funk’s hockey drama. (Machismo personified
comes in the form of Jared Abrahamson, just to make the films complement one
another even more.) Judy, on the other hand, encounters her own sense of
motherhood and independence when a 17-year-old mother-to-be at the grocery
store (Fire Song’s Mary Galloway)
makes her confront the fact that Jamie’s still a boy, but that the young can
grow up when they need to be strong.
The alienation is palpable and Hepburn’s raw ability to
harness the frigid landscape of the northern life and rugged Fort St. John
ensures that every breath of cold air has a bitter sting of melancholy. The
sparse soundtrack emphasizes a quiet life, doubling the loneliness that Judy
experiences in her isolation. The effect of all this silence, all this
stillness, can be bleak and depressing. While the interiors and the scenes in
the oil field don’t often benefit from the film’s preference for natural light,
Hepburn and cinematographer Norman Li find great power in the natural light
that comes off the coast by the family’s waterfront cottage. The whispers of
pink and purple in the sky breathe like fire as Judy frantically aches for
stability and security in the cruelty of her condition. It’s a tough, unforgiving
patch of the country. The fearlessness of Henderson’s performance affords the
resilience one needs to endure.
Hepburn knows how to use the petite actress smartly within
the frame. Henderson hunches over while her body shakes as if she has an
aggressive case of the shivers, but in the actress’s fragility, Never Steady finds Judy’s strength. Hepburn
stages several key scenes in a support group for people with Parkinson’s and
these moments in which Henderson and the ensemble fight to overcome a stutter
or suppress a tremor convey a refusal to let the disease define them. Henderson
is consistently reliable as a character actress with memorable turns in films
like Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy and the
Harry Potter/Bridget Jones franchises, and in the too rare case of an actor
finally getting a lead role to fit the size of her talents, she doesn’t miss a
beat.
Never Steady, Never Still is playing in limited release.
