55 Steps (Hilary Swank & Helena Bonham Carter, 115 minutes, 2017) 9/10
This is an indy creation with marvelous chemistry and acting from both of those star protagonists. They were both executive producers of the movie. True story and I have met the woman played by Swank,
Collete Hughs, who's married to a guy I've known for decades. Time didn't exist while I watched this (I always like that in a movie). This one goes to the heart.
From The Huffington Post:
There is no vanity in her (Helena Bonham Carter) performance. Completely absent are the once refined and incandescent good looks exhibited in her early Merchant-Ivory films as well as the eccentric allure of her numerous later Tim Burton vehicles. Instead, in 55 Steps, Helena Bonham Carter presents a totally new take on a woman living with mental illness. This is no criminal psychopath, blistering obsessive, or naïve Candide, but a real woman who knows she has been hobbled by doctors administering inappropriate antipsychotic medication. This is a true story, set in 1985-1990, about a mentally handicapped woman in her 40’s, who with the dogged persistence of her lawyers (played to perfection by Hilary Swank and Jeffrey Tambor), takes on the California court system to win justice for hundreds of thousands of competent mental patients, who have suffered, as Swank’s character states, “chemical rape.”
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