Miss You Already review: Sickly sweet at times, but still a brave effort

We are minded to go easy on the latest film from the always- interesting Catherine Hardwicke. Miss You Already brings together two much-derided genres – the aspirational big-city romance and the terminal-illness drama – to form a slightly awkward, but always diverting, package.

Milly (Toni Collette) lives in nice London mews with lovely Kit (Dominic Cooper). Jess (Drew Barrymore) inhabits the delicious houseboat with gorgeous Jago (Paddy Considine). Jago, who occasionally toils on oilrigs, is the only one who has anything that looks like a real job. The rest pay for their improbably sumptuous homes by having meetings in nicer bits of Soho.

There’s only so much yummy real estate a person can digest. Thankfully, Colette and Barrymore continue to assert their claims to be the best pals we’d all like to have. The former combines astringency with warmth. The latter is likeably daffy.

What really sets the film apart, however, is its unusually sincere efforts to chart the progress of breast cancer. From a script by comic Morweena Banks, Miss You Already remains a populist piece, but, when Milly is diagnosed with the condition, the filmmakers work hard at avoiding the sort of sentimental wasting we've been enduring since Love Story. The great Frances de La Tour gets to shave Colette's head in preparation for chemotherapy. A degree of vomiting is allowed. In one standout sequence, Milly shows us the scars from a double mastectomy.

Does all this fit comfortably with, say, the absurd sequence during which they travel north to relive Wuthering Heights? Probably not. But this remains a brave effort that deserves some indulgence.