The Almond and the Seahorse: Film Review
After making a name for herself in comedies, Rebel Wilson tries her hand at drama for the first time on film in The Almond and the Seahorse.
She plays Sarah, an archaeologist married to Joe (Celyn Jones), who hasn’t been the same since he had a benign brain tumour removed two years before. He suffers from a form of amnesia and can’t make any short-term memories. Sarah finds solace in Toni (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who has been in a similar situation with her wife Gwen (Trine Dyrholm) for the past 15 years. What begins as much-needed companionship turns into an affair.
The affair is the hook but it is actually the least interesting part of the film. I would have preferred Sarah and Toni to stay friends and be each other’s support system. They both need to talk to someone who gets it because caring for a person with a neurological condition can be lonely, upsetting and trying. They are both experiencing a kind of bereavement because the person they love has gone. But affair? I wasn’t convinced by that.
The film does an excellent job of highlighting how a traumatic brain injury can impact a relationship. Living with someone with a “broken brain” is incredibly challenging. You have to remind them of everything every day and you don’t know which version of your partner you’re going to get. It also brilliantly demonstrates what day-to-day life is like for Joe when Sarah is at work.
The star of the show is Jones, who also co-directed and co-wrote this movie adaptation of Kaite O’Reilly‘s 2008 play. He reprises his role from the play so it makes sense that he knows it like the back of his hand. Jones convincingly oscillates between anger, frustration, happy-go-lucky and carefree, and panic and confusion.
Wilson is the weakest of the bunch. Her performance is inconsistent – there are moments when she is good but her acting is often too big and she could have done with dialling it back a little. I think she’s so used to giving heightened comedic performances that she couldn’t help but do too much. You could tell she was “acting”, especially compared to her naturalistic and effortless co-stars Gainsbourg, Dyrholm and Meera Syal (as a doctor).
The Almond and the Seahorse, which is named after the amygdala and hippocampus, the parts of the brain responsible for memory, has some solid moments but is let down by the unconvincing affair, Wilson’s performance and the forced neat and tidy ending.
In cinemas from Friday 10th May