Stage to screen adaptations can be a mixed bag, either by playing it too safe with a stripped-back aesthetic that makes the film essentially a recording of a stage show, or by pushing too far with camera trickery and story expansion that means the strengths of the play are lost entirely. Kaite O’Reilly adapts her own stageplay of the Almond and the Seahorse with Celyn Jones, who performed in the original production and reprises his role as Joe alongside co-directing duties with experienced cinematographer Tom Stern.
O’Reilly has built up a considerable reputation for creating work centred on disability, including plays like Peeling, the ‘d’ monologues, and richard iii:redux. As someone who has been a fan of her stage work (though admittedly I hadn’t seen or read this one before), I am thrilled to see her work attract such an A-list cast, including Rebel Wilson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alice Lowe, and Meera Syal as well as a producer credit for Eddie Izzard.
The title comes from nicknames given to the amygdala and hippocampus, the sections of the brain that process memory and emotion respectively – as the opening title card explains, “the parts that make us, us.” The film follows two couples: Sarah (Wilson) is married to Joe who has a long-term illness that has left him uninhibited in his behaviour, and Toni (Gainsbourg) whose partner Gwen (Trine Dyrholm) has memory problems following a car accident several years prior.
Following the recent government announcement around disability benefits, the film feels limited in its perspective and inadequately reflects the real problems disabled people and their loved ones face, which is all the more disappointing to see considering the creative forces involved.
In contrast to O’Reilly’s other work and what the title card suggests, Joe and Gwen are not the focus of the drama, instead it is their partners/carers who we follow, no doubt why Wilson and Gainsbourg are in these roles. There’s an admirable frankness in its depictions of the day-to-day stresses both women go through, however the film’s opening flash-forward of Sarah and Toni’s affair undermines any build up of tension as we wait for over half of the film’s running time for their characters to meet. The solid low-key drama is thus undermined by the expectation of a late dramatic twist that doesn’t enrich the drama anyway.
This ineffective bit of storytelling is a shame as it distracts from the film interestingly non-judgemental depiction of its characters. The affair feels added in to create drama when the interpersonal dramas are solid enough on their own. Joe and Gwen have the most emotional scenes with their difficulties depicted realistically without overt stylisations typically used for dramas about disability. These fleeting moments suggest how the film would have benefited by allowing more space for Joe and Gwen to develop as characters, letting us sit with them in their experiences and understanding them as people rather than problems for the neurotypical characters to handle.
It doesn’t help that Syal as the doctor for the clinic Joe and Gwen visit is saddled with exposition dumps and speeches spelling out the themes, while Madeley does her best with little material as Syal’s receptionist/assistant (it is never clear exactly what her role is in the clinic). For all its comments on how the “system is overloaded” and families are left to cope without support, Sarah and Toni don’t seem to face any of these difficulties and any they do face are easily overcome. Following the recent government announcement around disability benefits, the film feels limited in its perspective and inadequately reflects the real problems disabled people and their loved ones face, which is all the more disappointing to see considering the creative forces involved.
The Almond and the Seahorse is in UK Cinemas from 10th May via Picnik Entertainmen
