Supernova (15) at South Hill Park

Directed by Harry Macqueen | Drama | English | 93 mins | UK | 2020

Tusker, a novelist, and Sam, a concert pianist, have been a couple for about two decades. The winding road trip they’re taking in a camper van through the Lake District is hardly their first, though with Tusker’s health rapidly declining, they know it will probably be their last. That likelihood casts melancholy shadows everywhere; even the bickering that fills the story’s opening moments takes on an air of desperate longing. In time, mutual irritation will come to seem as precious as a shared laugh or a morning cuddle.

This isn’t a film about how illness ravages; it’s about the difficulty and necessity of communicating honestly and lucidly while you still can. It’s also about the pleasure of watching two great actors give warm inner life to a love story. Firth and Tucci are completely believable as a couple and both give exceptional performances. Tucci underplays as his character deflects other people’s concerns about his condition and Firth, with the somewhat showier role of a man gradually collapsing in the face of his partner’s stoicism, expresses his trademark emotional vulnerability with some of the most moving work of his career.

Plenty of low-key charm and humour, not least in Sam and Tusker's believable, tetchy in-car interactions OBSERVER

Firth and Tucci's performances are remarkable in how delicately they navigate this maze of half-truths and suppressed emotions, all crammed inside their rusty campervan INDEPENDENT

Supernova trailer