Supernova

his is an intense, intimate, spare film about love, grief and dementia, and the two leads, who play a gay couple, are superb.

The film has plenty of low-key charm and humour, not least in Sam and Tusker's believable, tetchy in-car interactions.

Firth and Tucci's performances are remarkable in how delicately they navigate this maze of half-truths and suppressed emotions, all crammed inside their rusty campervan.

A terrific piece of writing about the difficulties of living on the fringes of a catastrophe - acknowledging the danger, but rarely addressing the true terrors that await.

The real impact of the film, however, comes from the leads' performances.

Some directors go an entire career without making anything decent -- whereas Macqueen has directed half a good film, and shaped dauntless performances from Firth and Tucci, on only his second go.

This is poised, unhurried film-making, and all the more affecting as a result.

There is such an honesty to its craft that the emotion of each moment, be it of joy, excitement, or, more often, crippling denial, bargaining or grief, hits you like a train.

For all of its punches to the gut, this is an incredibly tender story of love and loss, where two men unravel at different speeds, in opposite directions, in the shadow of the same dying light.

Supernova is a film that many will cherish if audiences can be absorbed by the overt metaphors and can look beyond the Rich White Male vantage point.