THERE HAVE BEEN many films about Alzheimer’s disease like “The Father”, “Iris”, “Still Alice”, “The Notebook”, “Amour”, but “June Again” has a different take when the memory of a patient is suddenly restored and she is no longer diosriented.
She then tries to reconnect with her two children who are so surprised to see her once again in full possession of her mind.
“June Again” is an Australian film. June Wilton (Noni Hazlehurst) gets afflicted with dementia after she had a stroke and has been living in a nursing home in Sydney’s North Shore for five years.
She used to be the owner of a successful wallpaper business and is a very controlling mother to her daughter Ginny (Claudia Karvan) and her son Devon (Stephen Curry.)
Then one day, it’s as if her brain snaps, becomes lucid and she has suddenly recovered. Alzheimer patients are considered as the living dead, but in the case of June, it looks like she’s been resurrected and given a rare new chance on life.
She escapes from the nursing home, gets a taxi and returns to their old home, which turns out to have new owners.
She soon meets her family again and she doesn’t like what has been happening to them while she was absent. Her kids are now no longer on speaking terms, so she decides to intervene in their lives.
She is disappointed that her son Devon, for whom she had such high expectations, never finished his architecture course and what’s worse, he’s now divorced from his lovely first wife and has a new family.
He is also alienated from his grown up son, Piers (Otis Dhanji), due to his own guilt feelings after a car accident that left the boy with a limp.
Ginny is married to a private investor that provides capital to start up ventures and they have two young sons who are forever glued into their gadgets.
June believes her kids have made some wrong choices in life and with her mind regaining its clarity, she helps them address their mistakes and she also tries to take new paths for herself that she has never taken before, to snatch a last grasp of happiness.
Her kids, of course, are frustrated with her meddling, which is treated with humor.
She also has a hilarious encounter with the new owner of her former wall paper business, David (Darren Gilshenan), who has big ideas about his own self importance.
Their encounter doesn’t end well but she gives him a funny comeuppance that he deserves.
June looks for an old but treasured dresser she has and learned that Devon has sold it.
In dreamy flashbacks, we learn how it is connected to a love affair in June’s distant past.
We are shown a young June (Matilda Ridgeway) and her romance with Danny (Sam Lyndon), the guy who made the dresser for her by hand. This is a subplot that emerges only later in the film and gives it quite a sentimental, poignant dimension.
The film works mainly because title roler Noni Hazlehurst is in total command of her character.
At first, we see her as a docile, quiet patient in the nursing home who cannot even pass her cognitive test.
Then, her memory is restored and we see her as the vibrant, strong woman that her character was before she had a stroke. She works well with Karvan, with her as the pushy, demanding mother and Karvan as the much harassed daughter.
“June Again” is the promising directorial debut of short filmmaker writer-driector JJ Winlove.
It’s a heartwarming narrative that is alternately hilarious, touching and full of insights about life, love, loss, forgiving and forgetting.
He presents his characters and their family struggles and conflicts in a breezy, non-judgmental ways.
The film imparts the bittersweet knowledge that life on this earth might be fragile and transitory, but it is our relationships with our loved ones that really make it worth living.
