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MovieMail's Review
Exploring the very black humour a married couple (Alan Bates and Janet Suzman) employ to navigate the challenges of life with their severely disabled 10-year-old daughter, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg was controversial enough in those experimental, boundary-pushing days of the late sixties and early seventies (when, respectively, the play and film first appeared), let alone in the politically hypersensitive era of today. To a 2009 audience, parts of it may appear particularly tasteless. But, in dealing with how a two people attempt to maintain their relationship when pushed to the limits of emotional tolerance — and in showing just how dark humour can be the sturdiest of crutches for those faced with a chronically desperate situation — Joe Egg is in fact one of the most tasteful and humanistic portrayals of the issues surrounding disability ever committed to celluloid.
Bates and Suzman excel as Bri and Sheila, a teacher and his wife who, in well-rehearsed routines evoking the cross-talk style of vaudeville, have created a comic character for their mute and motionless daughter (the eponymous ‘Joe Egg’). But the cracks in their marriage become apparent when their staid, conventional acquaintances (Peter Bowles and Sheila Gish) come to visit and witness their unorthodox approach to parenting. Not unlike George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — albeit with the contentious child at the centre of their torment all-too-visibly present — Bri and Sheila’s comic sparring begins to give way to something more painfully raw, as Bri confesses to harbouring plans to end his daughter’s life along with his own. Here, the genius of author Peter Nichols’ writing really comes to the fore: the case for euthanasia has rarely been as convincingly argued for — or argued against.
Defiantly unsentimental yet heartbreakingly profound, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg never strays far from its theatrical origins, but it doesn’t need to. It stands tall as a sublimely filmed record of one of the most affecting tragicomic plays of post-war British theatre.
The compelling story - filmed in 1970 but not given a cinema release until 1972 due to studio concerns about its controversial subject matter - in which a young couple use black humour as a means of coping with their severely mentally handicapped child. Although she puts a great strain on their marriage, they cannot bring themselves to have her institutionalized. Stars Alan Bates and Janet Suzman.
