“How many cancer patients does it take to change a lightbulb? One and then 12 to say, ‘How inspiring.’” Bad taste jokes are all the rage among the kids at the summer camp for teenage cancer survivors in this quirky, uneven, coming-of-age rom-com directed and written by George Jacques, who is an ambassador for the Teenage Cancer Trust and whose mother had breast cancer for long stretches of his childhood. There’s something rather contrived about his project though the cast is impressive and the film is well meaning and sometimes uplifting.
Seventeen-year-old Ivy (an expressive Bella Ramsey) has been in remission from leukaemia for 10 months. Her parents, a badly matched, unconvincing pair played by Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer; The Christophers) and James Norton (pictured below), have signed her up for four weeks at chemo camp, as she calls it, without asking her first. They’re worried that she’s become isolated and inward-looking. ‘You’re as stubborn as a stuck zip,” says her mother. Ivy is not amused, but gives in.
Set halfway between Glasgow and Loch Lomond in the rather low-key Auchengillan outdoor centre – beautiful surroundings but Scotland seems an unlikely choice, weather-wise – it’s certainly a world away from an American summer camp, though the peppy camp leader, Patrick, who has his own cancer-related family tragedy, is played with verve by Neil Patrick Harris (pictured below with Ramsey).
Ivy remains unimpressed, especially by a phoney motivational speaker that Patrick, for some reason, has brought in. “Fuck you, you grief tourist,” is Ivy’s parting shot before she storms out to shouts of appreciation from her fellow campers, many of whom return each year (Patrick makes her go to the on-site psychotherapist, played by Shalom Brune-Franklin, as punishment).
So clearly the camp has something going for it and before long – rather too easily, perhaps – Ivy’s part of a gang that includes her irrepressibly horny roommate, 18-year-old Ella (Ruby Stokes; Bridgerton; The Burning Girls and Black Dog, Jacques’s first film) who’s desperate to lose her virginity (the sceptical Ivy provides an excellent foil). And who can blame her – she had a tumour on her spinal cord that might still paralyse her. They’re a lovely bunch, innocent and wittily bleak about their various cancers (“Have you been cancer-ghosted?” “Yes,” says Ivy) and the film works best as a vehicle for the ensemble.
There’s blue-eyed, Scottish Jake (Daniel Quinn-Toye, pictured below) who becomes Ivy's boyfriend; Maisie (Jasmine Elcock) who reads tarot cards without much aplomb; goth-ish Ralph (Earl Cave, strikingly like his dad Nick: The Chronology of Water; Days of the Bagnold Summer) and shy, sweet-faced Archie, also known as Rash-Vest (Conrad Khan; County Lines). When the kids are together, things are mainly all right, though you never know when bad news may be lurking round the corner. Some summer campers don’t come back.
The hi-jinks do seem somewhat generic – dancing round a camp fire (Scissor Sisters’ I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ is Ivy's go-to track, so it’s played on many occasions, and she’s invented her own dance to it), running screaming into a loch, rampaging through a funfair – but there are original moments. “Can you piss on your period?” is a question that’s up for debate, with Ivy, Maisie and Ella making merciless fun of the clueless boys. Archie has sisters so “I know where it goes,” (he doesn’t) and Ralph says he’s bought tampons for his mum – “There’s lemon and lime flavours.”
Ivy and Jake’s first love is genuinely touching and tear-jerking. James Blunt turns up, bizarrely, for the end-of-camp talent contest to sing You’re Beautiful and the film’s score by Este Haim of Haim and Zachary Dawes is impressive, as is the soundtrack, featuring the Cranberries, Jamie XX, Bon Iver and Fred Again.
