THE STORY – Álvaro and his ex-wife Saffron attempt to set aside the drama of their messy divorce for the sake of their daughter Rose.
THE CAST – Antonio Banderas, Forest Whitaker, Úrsula Corberó, Eva Birthistle, Arinzé Kene, Eden Hamilton
THE TEAM – Trudie Styler (Director), Chloe King (Writer), Camille Griffin (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 122 Minutes
They say there is a fine line between love and hate, and when it comes to cinematic portrayals of family dramas, there is certainly a line between cheesy sentimentality and heartfelt sincerity. Trudie Styler’s new film, “Up Against It,” about a divorced couple who are told that conceiving another child is the only way to save their beloved teenage daughter from a rare disease, magically straddles the line and stays almost entirely on the side of love, a difficult feat for this type of subject matter.
Alvaro (Antonio Banderas) and Saffron (Eva Birthistle) hate each other. They are long divorced and happily partnered with Lara (Ursula Corbero) and Kingsley (Arinze Kene), respectively. The only good thing they have ever done together is have a daughter, now 13, who, like most teenage girls, hates her mother and adores her father. The daughter, Rose, acts up notably at Saffron and Kingsley’s engagement party but then discovers she has a rare form of leukemia, a recurrence from when she was a little baby. According to the family doctor, played by Forest Whitaker, an exact genetic match for a stem cell transfusion is Rose’s best chance of survival. IVF is the most obvious choice, with the assistance of a doctor played by Selena Tan, the film’s most amusing role. Predictably, none of this sits well with most of the film’s cast—certainly not Alvaro and Saffron’s current partners, but necessity makes strange bedfellows, and the attempt to conceive begins.
As this setup may strongly suggest, “Up Against It” asks the audience to make several leaps of faith. The themes, on the surface, strongly echo corny family dramas in the vein of “Life Itself” (also starring Banderas) or “We Live in Time.” Somehow, perhaps because of the talent of the filmmakers, the movie runs right up against those films’ worse moments but steps back just in time, producing something far more sincere and enjoyable than those other, sloppier fares.
Perhaps one of the reasons “Up Against It” mostly works is its script’s subtle, at times even hidden, true focus and meaning. As told by screenwriters Camille Griffin and Chloe King, this is decidedly a woman about women, much more than it is about life itself. Motherhood is a joy and a privilege endured with difficulty and alone, even for those surrounded by loving people. For women, motherhood is an all-consuming bodily experience, one that men simply cannot ever hope to equal. Through these challenges, women face impossible choices, as Saffron did by giving up her career dreams of becoming a lawyer. She settled for becoming a paralegal, while Alvaro went on to become a world-renowned musician. To top it off, women then must endure the critical gaze of their daughters, the threat of younger women, and the challenge of keeping family together. “Up Against It” is ostensibly about two couples navigating the illness of a beloved teenager, but if you pay close enough attention, you will see that its real, much sharper, and sincere focus is hiding with much sincerity in plain sight.
There are other ideas bubbling one layer deeper, and the story refuses easy answers or absolute truths. Raising children is difficult. It can drive marriages apart. It can also bring them closer together. Children are not to blame for our own faults, but sometimes they highlight them. Love is the most important thing in constructing a family, which can be made from a whole gamut of different components. These all may sound like truisms or even clichés, but “Up Against It” has a soft enough touch that it avoids making them feel this way. The point is not to preach or talk down to the audience, but to simply remind us of the beautiful complexity of the bonds we form as humanity.
To be sure, the movie has more than a handful of moments of sappiness that nearly ruin it. Any film that features a line-dancing scene by the entire cast, to musical tones meant to pay homage to a rainbow of different cultures that are dutifully represented in the multi-diverse cast, is going to catch more than its fair share of guffaws from hardened audience viewers and even a little from the most permissive. There are no surprises or twists, which is to say that the predictability also contributes to making this less satisfying than it otherwise would be.
But the actors are all committed to their bits, and the themes the script eventually returns to are all satisfying. Birthistle is given the hardest role, having to play the loathed mother at the center of it all. Banderas is a superb actor who knows how to play the part of the romantic but self-involved, artistically inclined man. Young Eden Hamilton as Rose also carries much of the weight, though she disappears for the second act. The supporting cast is all excellent, particularly as they serve to examine the absurdity of Alvaro and Saffron’s relationship.
“Up Against It” does not reinvent the family drama, nor is it immune from the genre’s most obvious illnesses. But it wisely understands that sincerity can be its own strength when handled with restraint, and that even familiar stories can still move us when they are grounded in recognizable pain, affection, resentment, and grace, all of which the movie has in droves. The film’s best moments are quiet, perceptive, and emotionally generous enough to make the excesses easy to forgive and the stories it features easy to connect with.
