“Ruby’s Choice” (PG) *** and a half

ONCE you’ve got it, there’s no pill or potion that you can take to cure dementia. 

It’s not a disease that you can get from another person. It’s a condition to which about 10,000 Australians fall prey each year. How did they get it? They’ve grown old, predominantly beyond 60. Most of them will be women.

“Ruby’s Choice” shines a light on recognising and explaining dementia.

For reasons about which you can conjecture, the Glenn Family Foundation paid for production of “Ruby’s Choice” and will donate 50 per cent of its profits to the Dementia Foundation for Spark for Life, through Dementia Care International’s innovative Model of Care.

So what are filmgoers getting for their ticket money? Meet Sharon and Doug (Jacqueline McKenzie and Stephen Hunter) and their adolescent daughter Tash (Coco Jack Gillies), living suburban Australian lives. Sharon’s mother Ruby (Jane Seymour) is about to loom even larger in their lives from the morning when she parks her yellow MGB and that afternoon decides that it must have been stolen ‘cos it’s not where she left it.

That heralds nearly two hours during which the film delivers a story about a middle-class family’s normal comings and goings as they gradually become subordinate to grandma Ruby’s needs and problems. The principal adults are confronting new and difficult issues. Tash, who at first objects to having to share her bedroom with granny, undergoes a sea change that turns into a joyous companionship that gradually dominates the film. 

There’s enough bite and dramatic muscle in this family’s travail to justify the film’s impact on the filmgoer. I quickly recognised director Michael Budd and writer Paul Mahoney’s shared solution of the problem of combining a complex emotional and behavioural structure with the need to reflect the human condition in recognisable form. 

Those creative talents delivered a special frisson of frustration in me. I knew from the outset where it was taking me. I recognised why and how. And I understood why it was making me wait for the denouement.

I’m glad that I did. I came out knowing that I had watched a talented collaboration of cinematic departments, from acting to environmental explanation. And I admired its philanthropic promise. Do yourself a useful favour. Go see it.

At all cinema centres