Only the rich, beautiful, and brilliant get cancer in the movies. Or dementia or ALS or some other lingering, wasting, usually incurable disease. Who wants to see a sick person who has to worry about paying the bills or can’t crack a joke or can’t solve the mystery of the universe? It would detract from our guilt-free enjoyment of their picturesque pain.
Catherine Hardwicke’s occasionally kooky but mostly treacly and manipulative “Miss You Already” has got that kind of cancer porn going for it. It also taps into the BFF vibe, the kind of female bonding that is shown in a rapid opening montage with passing years noted in subtitles and characters dressed in risible period clothing and a voice-over narration by the less interesting of the two friends.
But mostly it outlines an allegory about that supreme goal of womanhood: being a mother. This is a gift a woman must earn, and those who fail the test must pay a price.
Milly (a noble Toni Collette) and Jess (Drew Barrymore, the voice-over narrator) at first seem like poor maternal material. They bonded in their brattiness from the moment Jess showed up as the new student in Milly’s school in the ’80s. Then they lived through subsequent decades of clubbing, drinking, ecstasy, pranks, and adventurous sex until they each settled down with men with identical hipster haircuts and scruffy beards.
Though she was always the instigator, Milly got married first and was the first to have kids. But the meeker, more modest Jess has to keep trying, souring her sex life with her spouse (of course, the infertility is her fault). Where’s the justice in that?
Patience. Breast cancer strikes, threatening the most maternal part of Milly’s body, the emblem of her female vanity. And Jess finally gets a positive result from a urine test.
Hardwicke, who directed the first and best episode of “Twilight,” shoots this as though it were a “Twilight” sequel. Jump cuts, zooms into nostrils, tight handheld shots of people eating breakfast. If anything is missed in “Miss You Already” it’s a female director’s potential.
★ ½
MISS YOU ALREADY
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Written by Morwenna Banks. Starring Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley. At Kendall Square, West Newton, suburbs.
112 minutes. PG-13 (thematic content, sexual material, and some language).
Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.