Written and Directed by George Jaques
Starring Bella Ramsay, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Gunning, James Norton, Earl Cave, James Blunt
Embankment Films – in Cinemas now

As a survivor of the disease myself, I’m always wary about ‘Cancer’ movies, which in the past have fallen prey either to god awful sentimentality, ham fisted metaphor, or ‘noble death warrior’ syndrome. Refreshingly, Sunny Dancer is none of these. Cancer is shit, the movie says, and if you get it, it’s plain bad luck and you just have to do your best to live with the little bastard… and that’s drama enough.

Centred on Bella Ramsay as Ivy, ten months into remission from Leukaemia, the drama follows her to a Scottish summer camp for teen cancer survivors dealing with PTSD from their treatment and the disruption of their respective childhoods. You could pick all sorts of holes in the film’s episodic and sometimes bumpy linear structure, but it survives those occasionally potholes through the commitment of its excellent young ensemble – not just Ramsay (who’s always brilliant) but Earl Cave (son of Nick), Conrad Khan, and Daniel Quin-Toye, not mention Jessica Gunning, James Norton and Neil Patrick Harris all on top form, along with a fun cameo from James Blunt.

George Jaques’s direction and dialogue is light touch stuff – often very funny, and the tear jerks when they come feel genuine enough not to mawk the viewer.

At the heart of the movie is that rare thing – a properly character driven sex scene, without an iota of voyeurism, that I’m sure will touch the hearts or pretty much everyone who sees it. I absolutely dread film and TV sex – 99 times out of a hundred it is simultaneously excruciating, emotionally implausible and physically impossible. Here, it isn’t just tasteful but truthful – and, more importantly, hopeful, in an age when the narratives around teenage sex are unremittingly negative.

Or maybe I was particularly moved by this because I’m getting old – and my own youth is barely discernible in the rear view mirror. If that is clouding my judgement then that’s something for which there is absolutely no cure. 8/10