Still Alice

Sometimes a bit too tasteful and generic, but when Still Alice narrows its focus down to how this exact family and woman in particular deal with her diagnosis and eventually descent, it's deeply moving stuff. Praise for much of it working goes to Julianne Moore’s central performance and Kristen Stewart’s sober, quiet supporting work as her youngest daughter.

Too often though Still Alice focuses on the abstract reality of living with a degenerative disease and not the day-to-day grind. The story draws us in the most when it reveals how linguist professor Alice deals with the betrayal of her mind, or the emotional drainage that her husband is feeling. Numerous scenes that display the ugly, naked emotions are deeply felt and quite affecting. It’s just that they’re surrounded by moments that feel like a checklist from this kind of melodrama instead of organically emerging from the narrative.

Case in point, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish appear as Alice’s older children, but they’re missing in action for much of the running time. Moore really only interacts with Alec Baldwin as her dutiful and supportive husband, and Stewart as her actress daughter. Baldwin and Stewart nail their respective roles, a scene late in the film in which has an emotional breakdown in front of Stewart lingers as one of the few times when Still Alice shakes off the prestige and goes for the real, gritty, ugly drama.

Still Alice works so successfully because of Julianne Moore. Always a dependable actress, she’s delivered a gallery of troubled wives and mothers of dynamic range. And her work here is just as good as her beloved turns in Magnolia or The End of the Affair. She makes Alice into a real person, and her final moment with Stewart is a gut-punch. It’s also the final scene of the film, so while Still Alice may have stumbled along its way towards the finish line, it finishes on a very strong note.