FREEHELD PACKS PUNCH
Fight for equality and love
FREEHELD ★★★ 1/2 Starring: Julianne Moore, Ellen Page, Steve Carell, Michael Shannon Director: Peter Sollett Duration: 103 minutes
When your movie combines a wasting disease, recent history, a lesson in social equality and a love story, things have to move quickly. So when New Jersey police detective Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) meets auto mechanic Stacie (Ellen Page) at a volleyball game, it’s love at first serve.
In no time, the couple has moved from first date to first fight to first home, and it won’t be long until Laurel is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her subsequent battle advances on two fronts: defeat the disease or, barring that, arrange for her spouse to receive her generous police pension benefits.
The story has been told in even less time, in a 40-minute documentary, also called Freeheld, that won the Academy Award for best documentary short in 2008. But Ron Nyswaner, whose screenplay for the similarly themed Philadelphia (1993), was Oscar-nominated, knows how to move things along quickly and dramatically.
When Laurel comes out to her police partner Dane Wells, played by Michael Shannon, his anger is not predicated on the fact that she’s a lesbian but that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him sooner. There’s also an odd undercurrent of relaxation — he can now put down the torch he’s been carrying and concentrate on being her best friend, a task he manages admirably.
It feels odd and more than a little sad that the events of Freeheld take place in the very recent past — most of the film is set in 2006. Part of that has to do with the setting, Ocean County, N.J., home to about a half a million people and painted in Freeheld as a conservative backwater.
The oddly named Board of Chosen Freeholders, a doughy quintet, turns down Laurel’s request and is prepared to cite the Old Testament as a pretext. But then, in rides gayrights lawyer/advocate/activist/ rabble-rouser Steven Goldstein, played by Steve Carell and allowing me to pair the words “fabulous yarmulke” for the first time in my life.
Even if you’re unfamiliar with the results of the case or the general direction of the winds of change, there aren’t a lot of surprises in Freeheld. But that doesn’t diminish the emotional punch of the story or the calibre of the performances.
The least showy and most effective is Page’s character, pushed into the spotlight but clearly not comfortable there. Shannon shines as Dane. And if you’ve seen Moore’s Oscar-winning turn as an Alzheimer’s patient in Still Alice, you know she’s at her best when playing her worst.
Put it all together and you have a tear-jerking recipe based on the fact that, while most people are lucky to have one good partner, Laurel had two.