Lois Smith leads an all-star cast in emotional movie drama Marjorie Prime

Her major successes have been on stage there and on American television.

However, everyone can relish her latest triumph if they attend the next screening presented by the Eastbourne Film Society. Marjorie Prime plays at the Curzon Cinema on Wednesday January 23 with seats for the public.

Lois was born in 1930 so well into her eighties when she took on the lead role in this film in 2016. It was a part that she had already played in the stage play on which it is based, but in this version she is joined by an exceptional cast that includes Jon Hamm, Geena Davis and Tim Robbins. The film-maker, Michael Almereyda, is successful in creating a film which feels intimate but is shot in a way that never suggests that we are watching something better suited to the stage.

Thematically, Marjorie Prime is a movie which deals gently and poetically with such subjects as memory, grieving and the passing of time. To express these concerns about the human condition, the story has been given a futuristic setting but what emerges is not what we normally think of as science fiction for this is a work that deals in truths about life as we know it. All the acting is masterly, but ultimately it is the performance of the octogenarian Lois Smith that will lodge in your mind.

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