Linguistics professor Alice (50) starts experiencing strange memory losses and goes for a medical check, where she is diagnosed with early Alzheimer's disease, inherited from her genetics. Her husband John tries to support her, as do her grown up kids Tom, Anna and Lydia, a struggling actress. Alice tries to slow down the process via mental tests, but her state becomes worse and worse. John leaves to accept a job at Mayo Clinic. Lydia takes care of Alice when the latter is not able to talk anymore.
Based on the eponymous novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova, co-directed by Richard Glatzer who himself suffered from a neurodegenerative disease and died shortly after completing the film, "Still Alice" is a dark and depressive film about the consequences of Alzheimer's disease, giving a lot of effort in conjuring up an authentic and, appropriately, unpleasant film depiction of such a mental state. However, overall it is still just a "one-gimmick" film where the one standout component, Julianne Moore's excellent performance, overshadows everything else, since the whole film is much more relevant sociologically than cinematically. There isn't that much inspiration in cinematic techniques or dialogue, settling only for a standard, albeit emotionally devastating story. A few editing tricks would have been welcomed: for instance, it would have been a much more powerful reveal if they didn't show Alice making a video for her later self with instructions how to take a full jar of pills and commit suicide the first time, since the second time makes it less intense. Nontheless, the viewers can engage and feel compassion with Alice's plight from which there is no escape, and thus the ending is very touching, and luckily avoids turning into melodrama most of the time.
Grade:++
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