It’s her 50th birthday party and Alice (Julianne Moore) is at a restaurant surrounded by her devoted husband (Alec Baldwin) and her children… Lydia (Kristen Stewart) the wayward daughter who moved to LA to find fame in a theatre group, Anna (Kate Bosworth) the perfect married daughter pregnant with twins, and Tom (Hunter Parrish) her son who can do no wrong.
But things begin to go wrong for Alice when she’s out on for a jog in Central Park….life goes blurry and sometimes breathless and Alice finds herself disoriented, despite playing “Words with Friends” on her cell phone with Anna.
The doctor has confirmed – and after a series of tests – that Alice hasn’t had a stroke, but her memory impairment has all the makings of Alzheimer’s. Her husband won’t believe it…”we all have memory loss at our age” and it seems all the stranger since Alice’s day job involves cognitive science, having taught about neurons and specializing in linguistics at Columbia.
While the film could easily be a Hallmark TV movie, somehow it keeps us riveted as we go through Alice’s portal experiencing the instant yet slow burn of this disease, learning her children too, might be predisposed. Cancer isn’t as embarrassing. Alice suggests that ‘people wear pink ribbons and go on long fundraiser walks’ but while you might try to fight cancer, you struggle with Alzheimer’s.
Alice, an educated woman, desperately uses innovative strategies to cope for as long as she can sustain. And it’s because of this performance, that one might not think the film is great, but Moore’s acting is great. So great in fact, she recently won the Golden Globe for best actress in a dramatic role, and one can suspect, she’ll be walking the red carpet to the Oscars very soon. 3 ½ tiaras