A teenage girl contends with taking care of her dying grandmother.


THE LAST BELL is used with permission from Via Lubeck. Learn more at https://thelastbell.film.


Dylan is an 18-year-old young woman taking care of her grandmother Marge in hospice care. She's taking over for the day for her mom, who needs to go to work. Dylan is supposed to be traveling to Paris, and caring for Marge is not easy. Ill, irritable and imperious, Marge is irascible. And to top it all off, their generational differences make it hard to communicate and understand one another.

But when Marge lets go of her pride and Dylan lets go of her self-absorption, they begin to find a unique rapport, one that has unexpected resonance for the pair in the last few weeks of Marge's life.

Directed and written by Via Lubeck, this tender drama is a compelling and beautiful portrait of a grandmother and a granddaughter finding their way to mutual understanding and love, brought out through difficult experiences and tribulations. With its intimate, warmly empathetic storytelling, it also captures the complexities of end-of-life care, both logistically and emotionally, especially as it upends the dynamic between generations.

The film is confined to the home where Marge receives her care, both from Dylan and another caretaker. Taking advantage of the close quarters, we see how Dylan chafes in the almost claustrophobic confines of her new role. She has a teenager's impatience, which Marge picks up on. But Marge can easily dish it out as well, and her flintiness jabs at Dylan (and provides this drama with moments of levity.)

The storytelling focuses on the interaction between Marge and Dylan, with a sharp eye for how people can talk at one another but not quite see one another. As Marge, actor Nancy Berggren captures her character's blend of feistiness and frailty. She is especially moving as she portrays the embarrassment and shame that comes when a formerly energetic, independent woman is reduced to dependency. When Dylan finally witnesses this vulnerability, it allows her to soften towards Marge, a process captured by actor Mia Challis's beautiful performance. She's not just a teen saddled with an unpleasant task, but a member of the younger generation lovingly tending to her elder, even as the tasks themselves are embarrassing or unpleasant.

THE LAST BELL seems like a modest, slice-of-life drama at first, but as it swirls towards its ending, it achieves something much bigger: the evocation of life and death as part of the larger human story. It's the circle of life, with one generation leaving as another comes into adulthood. The gift in the story is its observation of what and how gets passed on between generations: memory, love and the wisdom that can only be learned through time's passing. Marge's death is a given from the beginning of the film. But her passing truly means something to Dylan by the film's ending, because the relationship between the two has deepened and ripened. Part of Dylan's grief will be what she loses after Marge's passing. But the gift is that she was able to experience Marge's love at all, before it was too late.