Eleven years ago, Tom Courtenay arrived at the Berlinale with Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, an exquisitely observed study of emotional dilemma in which the British actor played a doddery romantic whose selfish tendencies threatened to get the better of him. He returns to the German festival with a performance of similar weight and resonance in Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea, a film that centers on an even more challenging moral dilemma—albeit with results that are slightly less delightfully ambiguous than those Haigh managed in 2015.
Incredibly, this is Hammer’s first project to see the light of day since Ballast, his 2008 debut about suicide in the Mississippi Delta that was garlanded everywhere from Sundance to the Independent Spirit Awards. Prior to that, Hammer had worked as a special-effects artist, but for one reason or another, he stepped away from filmmaking directly after his breakout success. As comeback films go, they don’t come much thornier than Queen at Sea. The story begins as a woman walks in on her elderly mother and stepfather having sex and, in a moment of panic, calls the police. Both she and the authorities must then spend several days trying to determine if the mother, who suffers from advanced dementia, had communicated sufficient consent—a process that naturally puts her relationship with her stepfather on incredibly thin ice.
In Haigh’s film, Courtenay (who turns 89 this month and whose voice has taken on the delicious texture of Ratatouille-era Peter O’Toole) played a happily married man whose mind began to wander after receiving news that an ex-lover’s body had been discovered in the Alps. Both he and his co-lead, Charlotte Rampling, took home the festival’s acting awards that year, with Rampling eventually earning an Oscar nomination. In Queen at Sea, his main sparring partner is Juliette Binoche—whose character, whether by fault of her performance or Hammer’s direction, comes off as a little irrational and cold. This disparity is a kink in the film’s otherwise enticing design, and it quickly makes what should be a curious moral paradox feel a little one-sided.
Whether or not you agree with the characterization, Queen at Sea is still well worth seeing, and not just for Courtenay’s performance. Hammer had much of it shot on location and on 35mm by Train Dreams cinematographer Adolpho Veloso. As a result, the film looks consistently gorgeous, especially whenever the action moves outside, to the streets around Balfron Tower in East London—an iconic Brutalist structure that non-UK viewers will likely remember from its cameo in 28 Days Later. Most of what we see of Courtenay’s character, Martin, takes place in his home—a creaky, beautifully lived-in space that Binoche’s well-intentioned but difficult Amanda wishes to remove her mother from in order to check her into a nursing facility. That challenging role is played wonderfully by Anna Calder-Marshall, a veteran actress who famously played Cathy to Timothy Dalton’s Heathcliff in the 1970 version of Wuthering Heights.
To break the tension, Hammer wisely includes a romantic subplot between Amanda’s daughter, Sara (Bridgerton’s Florence Hunt), and a local boy, which allows the film (and the audience) to catch some much-needed fresh air. Indeed, without the severity of work like Vortex or Amour, or the formal trickery of The Father, this frank depiction of dementia can be upsetting to watch. Sara’s arc provides a welcome respite, even if the contrast of a relationship in bloom against one fading into the deepest winter ultimately feels a bit on-the-nose. A fine drama, nonetheless.
Queen at Sea premiered at the 2026 Berlinale.