WARNING: CONTAINS ADULT THEMES

Themes don't come much more adult than Alzheimer's. Which is why it is all the more remarkable to learn that Away From Her is the feature debut of 28-year-old Sarah Polley.

Much of the coverage of the film has focussed on Julie Christie's Oscar-nominated performance, and deservedly so, but this is a major achievement for the young director. Polley also wrote the screenplay, for which she, too, has been nominated. This is a skilful and sympathetic adaptation of Alice Munro's short story, 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain'. (Like Brokeback Mountain, this film started life in the New Yorker.)

According to the film's production notes: 'While Munro was not involved in the adaptation, she was pleased with the result. Polley found this out in a flattering voicemail message from Munro...'

I hadn't read the Munro story when I watched the film, but was struck by how well the film captured the subtleties of the narrative, and the interplay between the characters' past and present lives. Nothing of the story has been lost, and where it has been fleshed out, it has been done to good effect.

The experience of watching Away From Her made me reflect on the differences between films adapted from short stories as opposed to novels. I realised that many of my favourites are in the former category: Don't Look Now (Daphne du Maurier), The Swimmer (John Cheever) and Brokeback Mountain (Annie Proulx), to take three random examples. Could it be that film works best when it has an opportunity to explore the hints about character and motivation contained in the highly compressed form of the short story, rather than attempting to do justice to the much more complex and detailed world depicted in a novel?

I was very impressed with Munro's writing, and was pleased finally to read an author I had been meaning to investigate. I shall certainly seek out more of her work. The story from which Away From Her was adapted is contained in a collection called Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.