Queen At Sea

Amanda returns to London to be closer to her mother Leslie, who has dementia and lives with her husband Martin, Amanda’s stepfather. He devotes his life to caring for his beloved wife and continues to have sex with her despite Leslie’s mental and physical decline. Convinced that these encounters are non-consensual and threaten her mother’s life, Amanda decides to take action. A challenging family drama, QUEEN AT SEA examines how conventional notions of intimacy, care and love begin to collapse under the weight of conflicting, unresolved subjectivities. Every character here is caught in a storm, losing the ground beneath their feet and entering a state of free fall—a condition of perpetual disquiet and confusion that can only be confronted by accepting it as a fundamental condition of life, perhaps as even the one thing that distinguishes life from death. Lance Hammer conveys this feverishly existential experience in sharp, vibrant form: distant, surveillance-like observations; sensual, unpolished close-ups that capture clashes of perspective; and a striking autumnal colour palette whose muted shades of grey reinforce the moral ambiguity—or grey zone—in which the film unfolds. (Evgeny Gusyatinskiy)

Lance Hammer: BALLAST (2008)