Same old story | 24 May 2018

Edie tells the story of an 84-year-old woman who wants to fulfil a girlhood ambition by climbing a Scottish mountain. It stars the wonderful Sheila Hancock who has been criminally underused cinematically down the years — ‘I wasn’t considered attractive enough,’ she recently said. As there are anyway too few films featuring older women with their own narratives, I am absolutely desperate to be generous about this. That’s the aim. It won’t always be easy, frankly, but if there is one thing this film wants you to take away it is this: you’re never too old for a challenge.

At the outset, Edie is seen living under the hand of her husband. She’s been looking after him since he suffered a stroke 30 years earlier, but it was a stifling marriage anyhow. She was a drudge and, as we will later learn, he was one of those men who, if she ever spent any money, would query: ‘What do you need that for?’ After his death, her daughter ships her off to a retirement home where she is not happy. Instead, she is furious and scissors off the heads of flowers during a flower-arranging class, then sits there with a face of thunder. It is most satisfying, truly. Terrific, that bit. But next she discovers an old postcard sent by her father showing the Scottish mountain Suilven, and on the back he has written: we’ll one day climb it together, kid. They never did, so could she? Will she? Climb it herself? This isn’t an especially original story, you may say, but you’re not committed to being generous, as I am, so go take a hike yourself.

Written by Elizabeth O’Halloran and directed by Simon Hunter, the film has Edie arriving in Scotland, where she meets young Jonny (Kevin Guthrie), the co-owner of the local mountaineering shop who offers to train her for the ascent.