Starfish

Based on a true sto­ry, Bill Clark’s Starfish sees Tom (Tom Riley) and his wife Nico­la (Joanne Fro­gatt) liv­ing their dream. They have a love­ly daugh­ter, a beau­ti­ful house and a baby on the way. Then Tom falls ill and their lives are flipped upside down. Suf­fer­ing from Sep­sis, Tom has to have his legs and arms ampu­tat­ed and part of his face recon­struct­ed to help pre­vent the dis­ease from spreading.

It’s a heart­break­ing sto­ry due main­ly to it’s real­is­tic and pow­er­ful lead per­for­mances. Fro­gatt (Down­town Abbey, Filth) pours her heart into the role, refin­ing the emo­tion­al strug­gle Nico­la went through dur­ing this ordeal. The plot comes from Nicola’s per­spec­tive as she wit­nessed poor Tom lying in his hos­pi­tal bed. We spend time with her as she tries to raise her child while being heav­i­ly preg­nant, with bills to pay the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Tom’s ill­ness to deal with. It’s dev­as­tat­ing how much she goes through, but it’s an hon­est por­tray­al of fam­i­ly life and the sac­ri­fices we make for loved ones.

As Tom, Riley is required to give a more phys­i­cal per­for­mance that focus­es more on his dam­aged body. We see the limp he has devel­oped as he gets used to his new pros­thet­ic legs and how he comes to terms with dis­tort­ed speech (a result of surgery). Ini­tial­ly he is an upbeat fam­i­ly man, but becomes under­stand­ably angry and depressed upon his return from the hos­pi­tal. It makes for tough view­ing, espe­cial­ly Tom’s strug­gles to com­plete every­day tasks such as shop­ping or tak­ing his daugh­ter to day care.

Flash­backs to Tom’s past are flecked through­out the film, and they main­ly focus­ing on his par­ents. This helps empha­sise how impor­tant being a good father and hus­band is to Tom and how he feels like he can’t do that any­more with­in the shack­les of his ill­ness. This motif works real­ly well, pop­ping up unex­pect­ed­ly to show what is hap­pen­ing inside Tom’s head. It shows how each moment affects him deeply.

The film opts for low key light­ing and a mut­ed colour palette that helps add to the real­ism. Tom’s flash­backs are also told with a sepia style fil­ter to them. This does give the film a tele­vi­sion dra­ma vibe as opposed to some­thing made for a cin­e­ma screen but, this is an indie dra­ma focus­ing on a per­son­al sto­ry so it per­haps doesn’t need the feel of a big scale production.