Julianne Moore and Ellen Page play a real-life lesbian couple who battle New Jersey politicians for their rights in the well-meaning but fairly predict🧔able tear-jerker “Freeheld.”
Moore commands the screen as Laurel Hester, who has worked for the police department in Ocean County, NJ, for 23 years. She’s tough and so deeply closeted that her longtime police-force partner Dane (Michael Shannon) is surprised to ꦐdiscover she’s living with Stacie (Ellen Page), the auto mechanic who’s been her domestic partner of one year, when he drops by unannounced with a housewarming present.
It’s 2003, and shortly thereafter,💛 Laurel is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Her main concern is that the much younger Stacie be allowed to collect a survivor’s pension under the state’s relatively new domestic partnership laws. But the Ocean County Board of Freeholders uses a loophole to deny the application.
Even a per🐼sonal appeal by Laurel, a well-known and highly respected figure in the community, fails to bring a reversal from five men worried about their re-election.
The film takes a wrong turn with the arrival of a self-described “loud gay Jew” activist played as a flaming stereotype by Steve Carell. He has no mor🤡e luck than Laurel in swaying the implacable freeholders, but 🍬Dane begins working behind the scenes.
Dane rallies Laurel’s fellow cops, who have been warned by the chief not to get involved in what he terms a “political dispute,” and he runs down crucial information after a tip from the one fre🎀eholder (Josh Charles) leaning toward Laurel’s side.
The script by Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia”),🍰 inspired by a documen🌌tary of the same name, follows a familiar path as press coverage begins to sway public opinion and the dying Laurel appears one last time to plead her case beside an eloquent Stacie.
But the pedestrian direction by 🧸Peter Sollett (“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”) is strictly Lifetime movie-caliber, shameless in milking Laurel’s plight for every last tear.
Moore’s harrowing performance is probably too soon and too similar to her work as an Alzheimer’s𒉰 victim in last year’s “Still Alice” to merit serious awards attention. Page, newly out in real life, seems slightly uncomfortable in an underwritten role — a problem possibly magnified by the barely referenced 26-year age difference between her and 🦋Moore.
“Freeheld” does a service by highᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚlighting the kind of inequality that hopefully will be remedied by the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. But it’s a disappointment as a movie, though Shannon is especially fine in a rare sympathetic role.