Gigi & Nate

Nate is eighteen with everything ahead of him; he is going to university and it is all planned. He falls ill and his condition worsens; when he recovers he is paralysed from the neck down. He is in a wheelchair and can do almost nothing alone. His family cares for him. One day they hear of a programme: trained monkeys are given to disabled people as helpers. Nate gets one. Gigi turns on the light, turns a cap, picks up what falls. He begins going out again. Then he is reminded that the monkey is an animal. Nick Hamm directs. Charlie Rowe plays Nate and Marcia Gay Harden his mother. The subject rests on a real programme; trained helper monkeys were used in America for a period. The practice later became contested; animal welfare organisations opposed it and the regulation changed. The film puts that argument directly inside the narrative. The matter it works at is independence; Nate wants a life apart from his family and the monkey is the means. The family sections are the second strand and the mother is in the hardest position. Its limit is register; the emotional peaks are frequent and the narrative explains too much at times. Who it is for: viewers who like family drama based on real events. Who it is not for: it is predictable, the emotional register high, and the subject contested.