Queen at Sea: a nuanced and unshowy drama about the moral dilemmas that arise with dementia

• Reviewed from the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival

Perhaps it’s a mark of shifting demographics, or a sign of gradually eroding stigmas, but it’s notable that over the past decade or so we’ve seen a string of prestigious films about dementia. Particularly prominent in a wide field, are Still Alice (2017) and The Father (2020), both of which won Oscars for their leads, Julianne Moore and Anthony Hopkins respectively. In a just world, Anna Calder-Marshall, who received the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance (alongside co-star Tom Courtenay) for her portrayal of a dementia-stricken artist in Queen at Sea, would also be a fixture on this year’s awards circuit. But despite the similarities in subject matter, it’s hard to imagine Lance Hammer’s scrupulously unshowy drama achieving the kind of mainstream cut-through of its predecessors. 
 
For a start, Queen at Sea approaches this familiar topic from an unexpected angle. In its opening moments, capable middle-aged academic Amanda (Juliette Binoche) walks in on her stepfather Martin (Courtenay) having sex with her elderly mother Leslie (Calder-Marshall). Convinced that Leslie cannot consent, and furious that Martin has ignored her previous insistence, backed by their GP, that their sexual relationship must stop, Amanda impulsively calls the police. Her decision sets into motion a series of events which carry the question of Leslie’s future out of the family’s hands and into those of outsiders, the police officers, social workers and carers who are obliged to step in when a safeguarding issue is raised. 

The well-meaning but sometimes misplaced interventions of these officials, serves to crystalise longstanding familial tensions. Martin, himself increasingly vulnerable, is desperate to remain Leslie’s sole carer, partly out of his deep genuine love for her, but also perhaps to assuage his own growing sense of loneliness and obsolescence. Amanda, who has relocated from Newcastle to London with her teenage daughter Sara (Florence Hunt) to be closer to her ailing mother, is herself struggling to process her failing marriage, and sometimes seems to observe the tight, co-dependent dynamic of Martin and Leslie’s relationship with a kind of alienated longing.  

It’s a brave decision to hinge a film on the topic of sex and consent among elderly people. It’s a testament to Hammer’s skill, and of the unflinchingly committed, entirely unselfconscious performances of the central trio, that Queen at Sea (unlike some films about end-of-life care) never feels designed to shock or manipulate. Instead, Hammer offers a supremely nuanced illustration of a very real dilemma. There are no obvious answers here, and no clear heroes or villains. Martin and Amanda are flawed people struggling to grieve the wife and mother they are watching disappear. A less subtle film would establish a binary “us and them” dynamic between the family and the Leslie’s caseworkers, but Hammer opts instead for an impressively non-judgemental approach. Through brief glimpses of these outsider’s humanity – a thoughtful conversation between police officers about whether to arrest Martin, a care home manager’s kind updates to Amanda about her mother’s daily activities – Hammer gestures towards a wider cast of characters, whose day-to-day interactions bring them momentarily into the family’s orbit. 

Even Leslie, portrayed with great conviction by Calder-Marshall, is not entirely passive. In interactions with Martin, her eyes flash momentarily with tantalising moments of lucidity, while the accomplished drawings she compulsively creates – sat at the table, headphones on, world blocked out – suggest the ongoing survival of some as yet untouched central pillar of her selfhood. Courtenay is equally good, alternating between exquisite patience in his interactions with Leslie and infuriating intractability in his conservations with Amanda. An opening scene, in which Leslie and Martin painfully climb a steep set of stairs, arm in arm, establishes a perfect visual metaphor for the couple’s impossible plight, struggling both against the world and their own ailing bodies.  

Not everything about Queen at Sea works. Compared to the richness of the central storyline, a subplot involving Sara’s blossoming romance with a new school friend feels underdeveloped, offering a too simplistic parallel tale of sexual awakening at the opposite end of the age spectrum which never achieves the sense of lived-in realness that the rest of the film miraculously manages. But overall this is an impressively subtle film, an unsentimental yet highly empathetic meditation on the limits of love in the face of the brutal march of time. It’s another sign of the film’s unusual quality that the tragic denouement, when it comes, is both crushingly inevitable and surprising.