Away from Her (2006) on Netflix
Fiona's lapses in memory are diagnosed as probable Alzheimer's, and she and her husband Grant choose a nursing home for her. Residents take no visitors for the first thirty days.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.5/1023,899 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
Fiona and Grant Anderson have spent forty-four years of marriage in rural Ontario. Her recent memory lapses are diagnosed as probable Alzheimer's disease, and she and Grant agree that she should enter Meadowlake, a long term care home. Their marriage has not been perfect, and Grant's affairs during his years as a college professor still stand between them. Grant struggles with the home's rule that patients take no visitors during their first thirty days there, and with the residents on the second floor, where the more advanced cases live. When he is allowed to visit, Fiona no longer knows him and has grown close to Aubrey Barque, a patient who is mute and uses a wheelchair.
Cast
- Kristen Thomsonas Kristy
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Away from Her (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sarah Polley read Alice Munro's short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” in The New Yorker on a flight from working on Hal Hartley's No Such Thing in Iceland, and envisioned her No Such Thing co-star Julie Christie as Fiona.
- Although Polley said Christie liked the story, Christie's wish to semi-retire made her hard to persuade, and she was secured only after seven months of negotiation.
- Atom Egoyan, who had directed Polley in films such as The Sweet Hereafter, served as executive producer and advised her on directing, telling her that the actor is the only person doing something genuinely magical on set and that this has to be protected at all costs.
- The nursing home scenes were shot at Grand River Hospital's Freeport Site in Kitchener, Ontario, where the actors and 60 crew members spent two weeks working on an unused second floor.
- Away from Her was the first English Canadian film to cross the $1 million threshold at the box office in Canada in 2007.
