Edie tells the story of an 84-year-old woman who wants to fulfil a girlhood ambition by climbing a Scottish mountain. It stars the wonderful Sheila Hancock who has been criminally underused cinematically down the years — ‘I wasn’t considered attractive enough,’ she recently said. As there are anyway too few films featuring older women with their own narratives, I am absolutely desperate to be generous about this. That’s the aim. It won’t always be easy, frankly, but if there is one thing this film wants you to take away it is this: you’re never too old for a challenge.
At the outset, Edie is seen living under the hand of her husband. She’s been looking after him since he suffered a stroke 30 years earlier, but it was a stifling marriage anyhow. She was a drudge and, as we will later learn, he was one of those men who, if she ever spent any money, would query: ‘What do you need that for?’ After his death, her daughter ships her off to a retirement home where she is not happy.
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