Review of Now Is Good (2012) by Calum B — 17 Feb 2013

17 year old Brighton girl Tessa, dying of leukaemia, has a list of things to try to do before her time is up. This doesn't include falling in love with the son of the new people next door, but life plays strange tricks even when there is so little left of it.

Dakota Fanning, stellar as a child actor, faces the same problem all child actors face as they move into adulthood. After variable levels of success with Jumper and the Twilight films, Now Is Good provides an excellent transitional vehicle for her. The story is simple - a bucket list of ambitions, some of them questionable, undertaken by an ordinary middle class English girl whose anger at her fate is somewhat ameliorated by unexpectedly finding love with the boy next door.

This story is delivered well (with one or two minor mis-steps on the way) by an excellent cast. Fanning shows that her undeniable acting talent has remained with her through adolescence: Tessa is a very believable character. Jeremy Irvine makes the rather thankless role of love interest Adam into a rounded, likable young man, Kaya Scodelario is good as best friend Zoey (with problems of her own), and Olivia Williams makes Tessa's fairly rubbish mother a good deal more sympathetic than she perhaps deserves to be.

But Paddy Considine, as Tessa's father, shows us a man trying to balance dealing with the practicalities of his daughter's illness, trying to be a normal father in circumstances which are far from normal, remembering that he also has a son, and holding himself together in the certainty of his firstborn's imminent death. It is an immense performance; I doubt I will see a better one this year. There were tears from the audience and mine, as a father, were for him.

My sole reservation was that, with the exception of one scene where Tessa gets a nosebleed, it all seemed rather (and I hate to use the word) nice. Though Fanning has an interesting and attractive face, she will never be easily pigeon-holed as conventionally pretty, yet her illness and decline were never ugly. That was not enough to spoil a rather good, if small, film though.

Oh, and yes, her English accent was flawless. I expected nothing less.