Amanda

Early in “Queen at Sea,” there’s a sex scene. It’s brief and shows little, but the fleeting moment will inform everything that happens in writer-director Lance Hammer’s crushing second feature. This movie about consent and dementia — and ultimately, far much more — hinges on a questionable act that provokes a hasty emotional reaction. In the process, a family tries to come to the aid of its ailing matriarch, presented with only a series of unappealing options, each more unbearable than the next.

Juliette Binoche is beautifully fragile as Amanda, the dutiful daughter of Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), who herself has been married to second husband Martin (Tom Courtenay) for 18 years. Amanda and her teenage daughter Sarah (Florence Hunt) visit the older couple’s London home one morning, shocked to open their bedroom door to find Martin on top of Leslie, thrusting away. But embarrassment quickly gives way to anger for Amanda: Leslie has advanced dementia and her doctor has told Martin that he can no longer have sex with Leslie because she doesn’t possess the mental acuteness to give consent. Furious at her stepfather, Amanda phones the police, hoping the authorities can put a scare into him.

But Amanda’s call has unintended consequences. When the police arrive, they arrest Martin, advising Amanda that she take her mother for a “forensic medical examination” — or, as Amanda puts it bluntly, a rape exam — to ensure she has not been injured. Amanda’s rage quickly morphs into panic because she knows how dependent the childlike Leslie is on her husband, who functions as her primary caregiver. She just wanted to teach Martin a lesson, but soon, social services intervene to determine whether the elderly couple has to be separated for Leslie’s safety.

Even before the police becomes involved, Hammer hints at his film’s tense tenor. You can feel it in how he shoots the house’s severely winding stairs — dangerous for Leslie and Martin to navigate — from occasionally vertiginous angles. The camera rarely moves as we spy charged conversations from a distance, sometimes from another room or from a floor above the characters. We’re intruders, stealing glimpses of a private domestic drama not meant for our prying eyes.

Unlike previous terrific pictures about dementia (such as “The Father”), “Queen at Sea” is less about the crippling condition than it is the fulcrum for a troubling exploration of several topics: mortality, love, parenting and the grim futility of everything. Similarly, although Hammer takes seriously the question of consent, he widens his narrative’s lens to provide a thoughtful, complex view of the issue. Martin adores his wife, insisting that their doctor is wrong and that Leslie, in fact, does understand her sexual urges. To back up his argument, he informs Amanda that, frequently, it is her mother who initiates sex. But is that because dementia has robbed Leslie of the ability to modulate her urges? “Queen at Sea” offers no answers, leaving the viewer as uncertain as Amanda, who wants to protect her mother but cannot deny how drawn Leslie is to her kindly husband.

At the film’s heart is a terribly relatable family conflict in which each character assumes that they know best. Binoche plays Amanda with a surfeit of tenderness for her mother, who goes from being lucid to infantile without warning. (Calder-Marshall poignantly channels the silent helplessness that consumes those with dementia, making her an unstable chemical compound always on the verge of explosion.)

Just as fiercely loyal as Amanda, Martin vainly advocates for his beloved, knowing that Amanda has power of attorney and, therefore, the upper hand. Courtenay gives a marvelous performance suffused with simmering rage: To Martin’s way of thinking, it was Amanda’s foolish overreaction to seeing them have sex that led to all these problems. That feeling of betrayal resides on his face for the rest of “Queen at Sea,” even as he and his stepdaughter negotiate a wobbly truce concerning Leslie’s future, which includes an unexpectedly fraught trip to a care home.

Hammer has not made a film since 2008’s “Ballast,” another spare drama about brittle lives. Eighteen years later, his formal command remains formidable. Eventually, Hammer starts cutting away from the central narrative to focus on Sarah as she hangs out with friends and spends time with a cute boy, James (Cody Molko). At first, these carefree interludes seem to be a welcome respite from “Queen at Sea’s” choking anxiety. But as Leslie’s situation grows increasingly complicated, Sarah’s emerging love story proves to be a bittersweet, ironic counterpoint. Maybe Sarah will find love and great sex — like her parents and grandparents before her — but the shadow of despair that has descended on her family will someday come for her. She’s still too young to know how impossible aging can be.

Amanda Owen had to deal with an issue at Ravenseat during the latest episode of Our Farm Next Door

Amanda Owen was left concerned after noticing a “problem” at Ravenseat.

The Yorkshire Shepherdess lives and works on Ravenseat Farm with her ex-husband, Clive, and their nine children. Their first documentary series, Our Yorkshire Farm, debuted on Channel 5 back in 2018, and has since become one of the broadcaster’s most popular programmes.

The family returned to screens this month for the fourth instalment of Channel 4 favourite, Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids. The follow-up documentary series notably follows the family as they undertake the renovation of a 200-year-old farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales.

During the instalment on Monday (October 19), the Owens’ eldest daughter, Raven, returned to the farm, where she helped with various jobs. Meanwhile, Amanda, Sid and Miles were on a mission to rescue a pregnant sheep, who was stuck at the bottom of a hill.

“We’ve got a problem this morning,” Amanda said. She explained that one of the children’s spotty sheep, Coco, had been seen at the bottom of a hill, and it didn’t appear like she was able to move.

Amanda acknowledged that they needed to get Coco home, as she had found shelter in one of the most inaccessible barns on the farm. “She can’t stay here,” she added. “She’s grinding her teeth a little bit, which is not good. I don’t like that, because that usually means that maybe they’re in a little bit of pain. [She’s] definitely not right, definitely needs to come home… Very odd.”

Amanda, Miles and Sid used a large bag as a makeshift stretcher to pull Coco up the hill in the windy conditions. Amanda suspected that one of the lambs inside was sitting on a nerve, possibly causing Coco’s pain.

“It happened, actually, with one of my kiddies. Literally, I couldn’t move one whole side of my body. I think, hope, that’s what’s wrong,” she said.

Amanda went to visit Coco later on in the episode, explaining: “It’s been quite intense looking after her, because we have to keep her moving. Once a sheep is down, once any animal is down, it’s very difficult to get it on the road to recovery.

“They don’t make very good patients, not at all. But time will tell. All we can do is keep nursing her, she’s having turnips and cake and glucose drinks to give her energy. And good hay and water, and we’ll just have to see.

“I mean, everything could be all fine. It could be that the lambs have moved and they’ve laid on a nerve. I think if she gets her lambs here, she’ll be okay. So, it’s an age-old job. Hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst.”

A positive update was later shared, after Coco safely delivered her lambs. “It’s good news regarding Coco. Obviously, she went down, she went off her legs just before she was due to lamb,” Amanda shared.

“She has recovered and she’s had two lovely, healthy lambs.” Annas and Clemmy soon took their older sister, Raven, to visit the lambs and share their lambing expertise.

Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids airs Monday nights at 9pm on More4

AMANDA Holden has shared a heartbreaking but beautiful tribute to her stillborn son Theo.

The star took to her Instagram story in honour of Baby Loss Awareness Week and tagged the charity Tommy’s.

In the post, Amanda showed a candle with the words “waves of light” on it.

The flame flickered in memory of her little one, who passed away 15 years ago.

Amanda wrote: “Thinking of our beautiful son Theo and sending love to you all #waveoflight #tommys #babylossawarenessweek.”

Earlier this year Amanda opened up about losing her son, emotionally sharing how she still views herself as a “mother of three”.

TOOTH FAIRY

I make rings with TEETH – Amanda Holden is a fan but some think I’m weird

GLOW & BEHOLD

Amanda Holden shows off legs in black dress & plots to build wellness empire

She chatted about the experience on her show Amanda and Alan’s Greek Job with Alan Carr.

He was stillborn at 28 weeks in February 2011, a tragedy which happened just a year after she miscarried another baby.

She told the comedian: “I always say I am a mother of three. Because I am.

“When we lost Theo, there wasn’t one moment where I thought ‘why has this happened to me?’

“But there also wasn’t a moment where I blamed God or anything.

“And the way I accepted it was to think that he chose me, just for those few months, to see what it was like to live, and develop, and be in the universe. “Then the universe took him back.

“Now I don’t think that’s religious, but I let him go back.

“And that was my belief, rather than he went back to Heaven as such.

“I felt like he went back into the universe and he is still out there and is part of our family”.

Amanda shares two daughters, Lexi and Hollie, with husband Chris Hughes.

She previously revealed that fellow Britain’s Got Talent judge Alesha Dixon had been a major source of support for her throughout her baby loss.