‘Queen at Sea’ Berlinale Review: Love in the Time of Dementia

It’s not often that 18 years pass between a filmmaker’s debut and their sophomore feature. But that’s exactly what happened with Lance Hammer, who seemed to step away from directing after Ballast — a film that was widely acclaimed artistically but proved personally and financially bruising enough to push him out of Hollywood and the traditional film industry altogether. Queen at Sea, which marks his long-awaited return, appears at first glance to have little in common with that earlier work. Instead of following a group of African Americans in the American South, this time the protagonists are British and French, grappling with the complications that come with old age.

None other than Juliette Binoche plays Amanda, a Franco-British teacher who lives and works in Newcastle but is currently staying in London with her mother, Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), who suffers from severe dementia and is largely unaware of her own actions. Leslie is married to Martin — Amanda’s stepfather — played by veteran Tom Courtenay, whose six-decade career is matched onscreen by a character far more physically and mentally present than his wife. One day, Amanda opens the bedroom door and finds the two of them having sex. Horrified, she causes a scene: in Leslie’s condition — unable to give consent or account for her actions — Amanda believes what she’s witnessing amounts to abuse, even rape. When Martin refuses to accept her interpretation, the argument escalates, and Amanda ends up calling the police.

Once the authorities and social services become involved, the situation quickly takes on a far more serious dimension. No one seems quite sure how to interpret what happened, but as a precaution Martin is arrested and the bedroom itself is sealed off as a potential crime scene. By the time Amanda realizes the scale of what she has set in motion, she regrets reporting him — but it’s too late. Matters are further complicated by Martin’s insistence on returning home to be with Leslie despite official orders forbidding him from doing so. Amanda, for her part, no longer knows what the right course of action might be. Leslie, meanwhile, appears entirely oblivious to everything unfolding around her.

The incident that sets the narrative in motion is deeply provocative, opening up multiple avenues of analysis. Technically, it might well be considered rape — yet there are elements that muddy the waters. Leslie and Martin’s relationship is clearly loving; she depends on him, and he attends to nearly all of her needs. His central conflict, despite Amanda’s arguments, is that he does not accept the notion that he can no longer have sex with his wife of several decades — and he shows little willingness to comply with external mandates. The system, however, moves in another direction, and it soon begins to seem as though the most expedient solution would be to place Leslie in a care home. But wouldn’t that risk creating an even worse problem?

Hammer’s film shows little faith in the British healthcare system, suggesting that entering it can become a perilous bureaucratic labyrinth — particularly when it comes to elder care facilities. It’s a debatable stance (most gender-based violence cases handled by such institutions are far less ambiguous than this one), but it’s the perspective the film adopts. Would it have been better to leave things as they were? Could it be that Leslie herself, even in her dementia, retains irrepressible sexual desires — and that Martin is not the only one seeking intimacy?

Running parallel to this storyline is Amanda’s relationship with her daughter Sara, played by Florence Hunt of Bridgerton, a teenager in the early stages of sexual discovery and first love. The subplot feels largely unnecessary within the film’s overall structure, seemingly designed to lighten the tone and pull viewers away from the more oppressive reality of the elderly couple’s situation. Its thematic rationale may be clear enough — charting the full arc from tentative romantic beginnings to the fraught sexuality of later life, and offering a more positive, consensual vision of sex — but in an already lengthy film crowded with narrative turns, it contributes little and could almost be removed entirely.

Beyond Hammer’s somewhat blunt portrayal of public institutions — a critique not unlike that found in the social-service tensions explored by Ken Loach and Mike Leigh in their own work — the film’s first hour is painful and deeply moving, sustained by Amanda’s anguish and confusion over what she has done and what she should now do. She herself has no clear sense of how to cope with her mother’s illness and, however troubling his position may be, Martin’s stance often appears more emotionally coherent.

In its second half, however, the film becomes tangled in a series of unnecessary dramatic twists — one set in a care home, another involving Amanda’s daughter — gradually shifting from sorrow into something harsher. The camera adopts a degree of cruelty that feels excessive, and Queen at Sea begins to lose the empathy and humanism it had previously struggled to maintain. In those moments, it recalls Amour by Michael Haneke in its willingness to confront the full, unvarnished decay of the situation.

Even as it loses some of its force through questionable narrative and formal decisions, there remains a sense that Hammer’s chosen subject is both potent and necessary. Not only in terms of elderly sexuality, but also in relation to care, abuse, and the fears provoked by reaching — or witnessing a loved one reach — a stage of life defined by confusion, memory loss, and dementia. For Amanda, for Martin, and even for public health systems themselves, there are no easy or comforting solutions when it comes to dealing with people like Leslie. It becomes, ultimately, a matter of learning to live with one’s own suffering, that of others, and the pain that inevitably follows.