The Bright Side review – affecting cancer comedy gets the balance just right

There’s a lump in Kate’s left breast. After arriving at the doctor's with a bruised rib, she leaves with a calendar of chemotherapy appointments. A touching navigation of fear and friendship wrapped in a blanket of humble humour, The Bright Side is a charming Irish indie that charts the turbulent experience of this young woman and her breast cancer treatment.

As a stand-up comedian, Kate (Gemma-Leah Devereux) is well versed in channelling her trauma and tragedy into material for her sets, though her fellow patients and nurses in the hospital bay don’t appreciate her self-deprecating sense of humour. “It’s a chemo ward, Kate, not a comedy club!” she’s reprimanded. Unfortunately, Kate’s world-weariness and suicidal tendencies are only exacerbated by the dawning reality of her situation, and soon she’s pretty much ready to lie down and take whatever sentence her diagnosis hands her.

No tears fall. Instead, Kate lets out an almighty scream – one that has been building for weeks and erupts like a shattering bottle; exploding shards of glass she now has no choice but to tiptoe over. The Bright Side is both blunt and sensitive in the face of such an emotional crisis. Most importantly, there is a refreshing refusal to undermine this story with crass sentimentality.

It's in the dialogue and – sometimes more impressively – in the bouts of quiet stillness where writer-director Ruth Meehan and co-writer Jean Pasley’s subtle script excels. Look no further than the film’s adoration for Kate and Tracy (Siobhán Cullen). The latter is a fellow chemo patient, and though the pair are initially at each other’s throats, their cynical sense of humour unites them in a bond of shared hatred at the universe. The only issue is that you'll wish you could stay in these scenes for a bit longer.

Elsewhere, Fiona (Karen Egan), Róisín (Barbara Brennan) and Helen (Derbhle Crotty) – the other women on Kate’s chemo ward – are treated with humility and no secondary artifice. The Bright Side honours their differing and multifaceted reactions to their diagnoses and treatments, comprehending feelings of disrupted womanhood without abiding to unattainable or linear paths of recovery. While these scenes are occasionally sandwiched between borderline cringey and quirky moments, the film manages to keep things light and quickly move on.

Meehan confidently asserts and lingers on the most affecting scenes, eschewing the usual heartbreaking monologues in favour of more realistically affecting sequences. Like the one where Kate's niece can't quite understand why her aunt is balding. Or when her older brother (Kevin McGahern) cries frightened tears, the word “Goodbye” taking on a whole new meaning after Kate is dropped at the doctor's office. Meehan’s assured control over tone and pace ensures a satisfying comic debut that's all the more powerful for its understated dramatics and tactful handling of grief.

The Bright Side was screened as part of the Edinburgh Film Festival 2020. It is released in UK cinemas on 20 August.