To me, this movie is perfection.

How sad is this?

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Set in the beautiful countryside of Ireland, this deliberately paced drama, laced with humor, managed to keep me engaged throughout. It's quite well acted and ably directed by Steph Green, who co-wrote the script with Ailbhe Keogan.Maxine Peake, whose screen presence I found rather dazzling, portrays Vanetia Casey, a red-haired vibrant free spirit married to Conor and the mother of Lenny and Noni. Conor, also strongly portrayed by Edward MacLiam, is just returning to the family home after suffering a debilitating stroke. He had been in a coma for a month, followed by 4 months of rehab.Will Forte is also excellent in the role of Dr. Ted Fielding, a brilliant American researcher and neuropsychologist. Under a grant, he's doing a research case study on Conor's rare recovery from this type of stroke. He'll be monitoring Conor's progress 24/7 while living with the Casey family.They'll be two major concurrent themes at work here. One is the powerful chemistry and attraction between Vanetia and Ted, which will lead to all kinds of underlying tension in the home. Another will be the dramatic family dynamics that play out as they try to adjust to Conor's limited capacities, as he strives to improve in his recovery.All in all, despite some depressive moments, the filmmakers find a way to add some humor along the way and not get too maudlin in the process. Also, Peake's wonderful performance adds so much life to the film and is worth the price of admission.

It's hard to tell what the right choices are in life. It's even harder if someone close to you has an illness, how you should react to that. And if there is also an outside force trying to come in from the outside (whatever the original motives are), that it gets even tougher. So decisions are being made that are not only rational.But while this drama seems to be concentrating on an illness, it is giving us human beings, who just are reacting to each other and the circumstances they find themselves in. This either will appeal to you right away or you will dislike it. Good thing is, you can tell early on if this drama is something you want to watch or not

The other reviews already described it: It's an artsy, independent, European movie. If you liked sunshine cleaning, Juno and/or little miss sunshine, you'll probably like this one too, although it has no comic scenes in it. And you won't see the hard stuff of brain-seizures, so it's a family-friendly movie. But what really, really bugged me was the catholic, conservative, misogynistic ending. Off course there was no room to even think about staying altogether, off course there had to be a decision made and also off course it had to be made without the handicapped, but for him. And off course the woman is happy to relinquish, because that's the way they are.I find this very sad, because all of the (state) money for the movie is wasted, if you're not able to make a movie that challenges the audience to dream or think in a new way or question their way of thinking. A solution would have been an open end, but that was also not done here. With this ending it's more of a cheesy lifetime-movie...

An Irish family welcome home Conor, the husband and father who has recently suffered a life changing stroke. In tow is an American psychologist who is studying Conor's progress as he tries to settle back into the family life. It's not long before the American becomes the father figure himself and also begins to veer towards a deeper relationship with Vanetia, the wife.For a film that clocks in at just over 1 hour 40 minutes this still felt rather long winded in places. Some of the dramatic scenes work well and the performances are perfectly OK, Edward MacLiam as Conor in particular impressing whereas Maxine Peake as his free-spirited wife struggles badly with the Irish accent which doesn't help.It seems however there is too much thrown into the pot and in the end it becomes unnecessarily convoluted - we have the blossoming relationship between the wife and the psychologist, the struggles of the husband and wife, the son facing up to homosexuality, the suspicious father-in-law, the sister who's taken a shine to the American and so on. All this leaves it rather disjointed and had it just centred on the 3 way adult relationship dynamic it would've made for a much stronger film.Not all bad but something of a mixed bag.