It’s been 16 years since Christine Jeffs’ last feature, the seriocomic Amerindie sleeper “Sunshine Cleaning,” with Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. Her new feature “A Mistake” hews back to her 2001 debut, “Rain,” in that it is set in her native New Zealand and adapts its script from a Kiwi author (in this case Carl Shuker’s fifth novel). Though not a knockout, the director’s return affirms her knack for intelligent adult drama, here hinging on issues of medical ethics and bureaucracy — Elizabeth Banks plays an Auckland surgeon whose reputation and career are threatened when a patient dies after what had been anticipated as a routine procedure. Quiver Distribution is releasing the Tribeca-premiered film to 100+ U.S. theaters this Friday.
The distractingly named Elizabeth Taylor (Banks) is a highly regarded specialist, woken from a nap during one long night-shift by an emergency: A patient previously discharged as having minor ailments is re-admitted with severe abdominal pain, which the doctor judges as requiring immediate surgery. Rather than the appendicitis she’d been diagnosed with, it turns out Lisa (Acacia O’Connor) has a “galloping infection” from septicemia. Instructing registrar Richard (Richard Crouchley) as she operates, she lets the nervous trainee insert a gas port into the abdomen on his own. He bungles that move, rupturing an artery. Nonetheless, after a few frantic moments the surgery successfully concludes, the patient presumed out of danger. Later in the ICU, however, Lisa suffers a lethal cardiac arrest.
Because the gravity of the young woman’s condition had not been detected earlier, Liz is fairly certain Richard’s error wasn’t in itself fatal — the patient ultimately died for reasons those in the operating theater could not have prevented. But to protect that trainee, the doctor initially covers for his blunder.
But the distraught parents (Rena Owen, Matthew Sunderland) are not satisfied with the explanation given for their daughter’s demise, and pressure to assign blame begins to build. Inconveniently, all this occurs just as the institution is enforcing new policies that require surgical outcomes to be publicly posted in the name of “transparency.” Liz argues that this will “hang surgeons out to dry,” reducing complicated, informed decisions made in emergency situations to an online thumbs-up or down. That protest puts her in the crosshairs of the supercilious hospital bureaucrat Andrew (Simon McBurney), who seems very willing to throw Liz under the bus, particularly once those grieving parents complain to the tabloid press.
Jeffs’ measured treatment can make the script seem a bit overloaded with underdeveloped issues, as the filmmaker seems less interested in building tension than capturing the heroine’s increasing, isolated frustration. Beyond the potential derailing of her own vocation (though even Andrew admits she’s “absolutely brilliant”), Liz must cope with Richard’s panicked unraveling; unexpected disloyalty from girlfriend Robin (Mickey Sumner), a nurse who distances herself both professionally and personally at the first sign of trouble; having to take care of her sister’s dog on short notice; and an insect infestation that turns her home into a source of additional stress.
Though well-acted, the subsidiary characters lack much depth or context, so the pileup of crises they generate feels a bit hollow. Even our protagonist could use a tad more detailing. In the source novel, Dr. Taylor is apparently an edgier, more intimidatingly driven figure, which would help sharpen some of the conflicts here. But while she easily convinces as a scrupulously high-minded professional, Banks is such a warm, empathetic performer that the trials Liz endures feel more contrived than they might’ve otherwise. That also has a reductive effect on her adversarial relationship with Andrew, who in McBurney’s turn comes off as a one-dimensional villain, sneeringly misogynistic and hypocritical. Perhaps we’re meant to assume he resents her as a natural superior, but Banks remains too likable to elucidate such spite. The medical jargon deployed can also be a bit of a hurdle, dense enough that lay viewers may be unclear just what happened to poor Lisa — is her death anyone’s fault?
Despite these quibbles though, “A Mistake” still compels interest. The relatively low-key tenor Jeffs retains from her prior features (which also include 2003’s “Sylvia,” with Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig as poets Plath and Ted Hughes) may not bring great urgency to the story’s thriller-like aspects. But it does once again firmly focus our attention on a smart but embattled female protagonist’s headspace during a period of escalating internal and external strife.
As in some of her other best non-comedic roles, like “Love & Mercy” and “Call Jane,” Banks is persuasive as the kind of natural minder who prefers to tactfully encourage collective effort rather than issue orders— but will take an obstinate stand in the face of blatant injustice. That climaxes somewhat predictably with a big speech at loathsome Andrew’s expense. After a quietly effective second encounter with Lisa’s parents, “A Mistake” ends on a lengthy shot that doesn’t quite summon the cathartic impact intended. Yet this imperfect drama nevertheless engrosses in its exploration of the life-and-death complexities of the healing arts, and how what may appear a simple matter of right or wrong from the outside can be much more trickily nuanced for those actually making fateful decisions.
Taking its aesthetic from the cool neutrality of institutional settings, the film has a sleek but unshowy aesthetic nicely supported by all design and tech contributors. A graceful orchestral score by Frank Ilfman is among the more expressive elements here, though it too refrains from overt melodramatics.
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