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the audience applauded

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The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

English professor Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) is diagnosed by Dr. Harvey Kelekian (Christopher Lloyd) with ovarian cancer. She goes through chemotherapy treatments for her stage 4 cancer. She has flashbacks to her mentor Evelyn Ashford (Eileen Atkins), and her father (Harold Pinter). Dr. Jason Posner is her young doctor who actually took her class. Susie Monahan is her nurse and the only one who seems to have any empathy.Emma Thompson is terrific. It is funny at times with the young Posner and touching with nurse Monahan. It is a real actor's movie. It is compelling for anyone who has had to deal with cancer or any extended hospitalizations. The emotions are well represented. It's a fine TV movie that is above the standard movie of the week.

Possible Spoiler: Since it is immediately explained, I'm not giving much away in saying that this is a film about an accomplished literary professor who is dying of ovarian cancer. And for the most part, it is just as grim as that summary sounds. But Emma Thompson, just about the only character who matters, is a brilliant actress, beautiful even when completely bald. Mainly, the film is about her coming to terms, slowly and painfully, with her approaching death. The subtext is that with the exception of one nurse (Audra MacDonald) she is treated as little more than an object, an experiment even, by the doctors, including a young resident who took her literature class in college. Although the film depends entirely on Ms. Thompson, who is almost never off-screen, Mike Nichols, who directed and co-wrote the script with Ms. Thompson, deserves credit if for no other reason then for allowing a great actress the freedom to handle an exceptionally difficult, even harrowing, role with a skill that few living actresses could match. The movie is adapted from a Pulitzer Prize winning play by Margaret Mason. Knowing the plot, I would not have chosen to see the movie except for Emma Thompson (and Mike Nichols) but I'm glad I did.

Vivian Bearing is a professor of English literature with her career and life dedicated to the study of the poetry of John Dunn. When she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer she enters a full cycle of treatment that leaves her hairless, sick and weak. As she lies in her room or is shuffled from one set of tests to the next set of treatments she reflects on where she finds herself and how she has approached her life thus far.My plot summary does this a great injustice because it makes it sound like a daytime tvm where we gets lots of emotional flashbacks and lots of lessons learnt and weepy scenes. Nothing could be further from the truth with this film although it does do an element of these. Instead of being manipulative and corny though the film is endlessly poignant, convincing and touching. The style is quite similar to Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, with Vivian being quite matter-of-fact in her to-camera scenes but ultimately betraying emotion and hurt underneath. This approach is well mixed with more traditional scenes and it worked really well for me. I liked the way that Nichols drew the flashback scenes into the monologue scenes and then into the wider scenes with other characters, it worked very well for me and made the film flow in a rather beautiful fashion.Of course the strength of the film is in how utterly moving it is and how it achieves this without ever resorting to cheese or easy sentiment. This is represented in human form by Emma Thompson who gives a performance that is beyond criticism as it is without a flaw. She is utterly convincing and her performance had me smiling as often as crying – it is powerful stuff and I'll say no more because I think to say more would risk somehow lessening it. In support it is hard to say how the others do because of how dominant Thompson is but in fairness the fact that they do hold their own is a credit to them. Lloyd has a cameo more or less but is effective and works well in his character. Woodward is an interesting turn while McDonald does a great job with a character that could easily have been basic and corny.A great film then and ironically so, since it sat on my recorder for over a month before I tried it. It is not a difficult watch but it is very moving and is delivered in a great style that mixes Talking Heads with human drama. The script is brilliant and the delivery from Nichols makes it flow seamlessly while Thompson sits at the heart – convincing, touching and excellent throughout.

This movie is brilliant, but incredibly hard to watch. The entire last thirty minutes I had a lump wedged in my throat, and I couldn't help but cry on three or four occasions. The pain of Thompson's character feels unbearably real. Throughout the film you develop a true understanding of the character, Vivian, and seeing this strong, independent, successful woman reduced to such weakness and vulnerability is very difficult. Yet the trajectory is conducted with such dignity - completely redundant of self-pity. It is incredibly moving.At the heart of it this is a film about human life, scratched to the very bare surface and faced with a number of important and terrifying questions. Definitely worth watching, but be prepared for an extremely difficult 90 minutes.