Free­held

In Feb­ru­ary 2014 actor Ellen Page gave a rous­ing, inspi­ra­tional and mov­ing com­ing out speech at the inau­gur­al Thrive con­fer­ence. She spoke of the ​“per­va­sive stereo­types about mas­culin­i­ty and fem­i­nin­i­ty that define how we are sup­posed to act, dress and speak” and how they, ​“serve no one”.

She also talked about the courage it takes to stand up to these norms. So the appeal of this project based on a true sto­ry which also takes inspi­ra­tion from an Acad­e­my Award win­ning doc­u­men­tary by Cyn­thia Wade in which she gets to play a gay woman fight­ing for the right to her dying partner’s pen­sion is clear. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, despite the refresh­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women, the Peter Sollett’s Free­held fails to cap­ture many con­vinc­ing or stir­ring moments and plays out like an aver­age TV movie. Pass­able at best and con­de­scend­ing at worst, it’s a 50-shades-of-beige retelling of a gal­vanis­ing moment in cul­tur­al history.

When Detec­tive Lau­rel Hes­ter (Julianne Moore) is informed she has stage four lung can­cer she pre­pares for the worst to ensure her part­ner Sta­cie Andree (Page) is tak­en care of finan­cial­ly when she pass­es away. But things don’t prove to be that sim­ple due to the straight, all-male New Jer­sey Board of Cho­sen Free­hold­ers in Ocean Coun­ty, New Jer­sey, who refuse to break with tra­di­tion and grant Lau­rel her dying wish. It’s a case that made head­lines with the board even­tu­al­ly set­ting a new prece­dent for gay-rights marriage.

With a doc­u­men­tary already explain­ing the facts behind the case, the ques­tion of what fresh new ideas this drama­ti­sa­tion bring to the table remains. The answer is very few. Screen­writer Ron Nyswan­er deliv­ers a stale, pas­sion­less script that doesn’t dig deep enough into Hes­ter and Andree’s rela­tion­ship; they meet at a vol­ley­ball game where they eye one anoth­er up over the net, go on a date where Hes­ter whips out her pis­tol on a gang of les­bian-hat­ing thugs and then they head for a spot of fish­ing on the beach. A year lat­er they’re liv­ing together.

The life­less direc­tion and frankly embar­rass­ing action sequences which add noth­ing to the sto­ry oth­er than repet­i­tive­ly attempt­ing to remind the audi­ence that Hes­ter is as capa­ble as any of the male offi­cers on the force drag bad­ly. Nyswan­er neglects to forge an engag­ing sto­ry and ends up relay­ing the facts in a mechan­i­cal man­ner. The roman­tic dynam­ic between Page and Moore is flim­sy, with Moore shar­ing more chem­istry with Michael Shan­non who plays her work part­ner Dane Wells. Then in march­es Steve Car­rell, drain­ing away any small amount of poignance as activist and founder of Gar­den State Equal­i­ty, Steven Gold­stein. His per­for­mance smacks of falseness.

Once Hester’s can­cer treat­ment starts and the case against the free­hold­ers begins, things take a turn for the mov­ing. The real­i­ty of Hester’s chemother­a­py is tough to endure, with Moore turn­ing in a restrained but affect­ing turn. But by this point, with hard­ly any invest­ment in the thin­ly drawn les­bian char­ac­ters, Nyswan­er leaves it up to Shannon’s every­man to ral­ly the troops and whip up the film’s few inspi­ra­tional if some­what cheesy moments.