Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth are Tusker and Sam, a 20-year couple embarking on a campervan holiday around old haunts in England’s Lake District. Tusker is a writer, Sam a musician – both evidently of some standing, even if Tusker’s latest novel isn’t coming together. There’s a reason for that: he’s been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and he’s in decline. The book will never be finished.
The bones of writer-director Harry Macqueen’s (Hinterland) moving road-trip drama are simple, but Firth and Tucci’s immaculate performances put ample flesh on them. Without preamble, they communicate a sense of a lived-in love affair, emotions that have deepened with time. Over 90 minutes they will basically reduce you to mush.
Firth is perfect as the buttoned-up, fussing, terrified Sam, but it’s Tucci’s movie. He maps out poles of bonhomie and aching vulnerability and jags between them as the pair face the future. Tusker’s piss-taking keeps the dread at bay, with some aggro with the chirpy satnav a highlight. ‘She sounds like Margaret fucking Thatcher,’ he notes. ‘First, it’s Section 28, and now she’s going to tell us where to go on our holiday.’
Supernova is a film of landscapes – the painterly ones the pair pass through (you will want to visit the Lake District asap), and roiling internal ones as they wrestle with their fears. Macqueen’s script smartly identifies that it’s as much Tusker looking after Sam as the other way around. It’s one of the relatable truths in a film full of them.
In UK cinemas Jun 25. Available on VOD in the US now.