Berlinale

'Queen at Sea', the dementia drama starring Tom Courtenay and Juliette Binoche

In competition at the Berlin Film Festival the return behind the camera of Lance Hammer

by Andrea Chimento

19 February 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

A film eighteen years in the making: it was in 2008 when Lance Hammer presented his successful debut feature, 'Ballast', at the Sundance Film Festival and then in Berlin, and he is finally back behind the camera for a new feature film, entered in the German festival competition.

It is 'Queen at Sea', a film that deals with the sensitive topic of dementia.

Amanda and her stepfather Martin will have to make some extremely difficult choices: Amanda's mother, Leslie, suffers from this terrible pathological condition and seems to have lost the ability to make decisions for herself.

Who, then, is to determine what to do for Leslie and what is best for her? It is from these questions that 'Queen at Sea' starts, a film that leads the audience to reflect and reason along with the characters in the film, posing the viewer with the same ethical and moral doubts that run through the minds of Amanda and those around her.

To talk about the subject, the film does not choose easy roads and even focuses on the sexual relations Martin continues to have with his partner, even going so far as to bring to life the far from trivial question of consent.

Martin and Amanda, played respectively by Tom Courtenay and Juliette Binoche, approach this theme, and several others, in quite different ways, and the film is above all a tale of the different opinions and views of the two characters in the face of Leslie's constant deterioration.

An uneven narrative, despite great performances

'Queen at Sea' starts from an undoubtedly solid foundation, also demonstrating Hammer's talent, although his debut 'Ballast' had an undoubtedly more consistent dramaturgical hold.

"In fact, 'Queen at Sea' gets lost in some subplots, especially when it focuses on Amanda's teenage daughter, going a little off-topic and using an alternate montage to make a comparison between the girl and her elderly grandmother really superfluous and out of place: the narrative thus becomes unnecessarily long-winded, leading to a very uneven outcome.

In spite of some tangible limitations, the film remains on a nevertheless effective level thanks mainly to the great performances of two acting giants such as Tom Courtenay and Juliette Binoche: both are definitely candidates to enter the Berlinale's final palmarès.

My Wife Cries

Also in competition in Berlin was Angela Schanelec's new film, 'My Wife Cries'.

The German director is now in her third appearance in the festival competition and, so far, has always taken home an award: best director in 2019 for 'I Was at Home, but...' and best screenplay in 2023 for 'Music'.

In "My Wife Cries", Thomas receives a call from his wife Carla and has to pick her up from the hospital. He finds her in tears and discovers that she has been in a car accident: Carla tells him about her dance partner David, with whom she was going to see a house in the country, who died in the accident. Carla tries to tell her husband everything openly, but Thomas becomes increasingly withdrawn.

It is a film about incommunicability 'My Wife Cries', a film about a couple that cannot understand each other and the search for a common language.

Schanelec relies on an essential style, reduced to the bare minimum, but at the risk of being overly self-congratulatory and ambiguous in what it wants to tell.

The German author's sensitivity in dealing with the human soul is not in doubt, not least due to her ability to portray a couple's crisis in a highly personal manner, but the sense of estrangement she wants to offer runs the risk of being too contrived and not involving as much as she would have liked.