Onwards and Sideways takes an inherently daunting premise—two strangers receiving Parkinson’s diagnoses—and refuses both the falsely tidy cure narrative and total despair. Director John Madden instead makes room for fear, frustration, awkwardness, attraction and practical adaptation. The result is a deliberately gentle, sometimes overly neat drama, but one elevated by the specificity and care of Laura Linney and Rhys Ifans.

The film premiered in the Gala Presentations program at Toronto and runs 114 minutes. It is set for a U.K. theatrical release on November 6. Its strongest quality is not surprise: the broad direction of the story will be apparent early. Rather, it is the attention given to how differently two people can respond to the same life-changing information—and how much companionship matters when neither person is ready for the same thing at the same time.

A romance born from devastating news

Ifans plays Tony Evans, a widowed primary-school teacher who has spent more than three decades in the classroom. He is nearing 60 and settled into a quiet routine when a pupil notices that his right hand seems frozen. The observation sends him toward a hospital appointment with neurologist Professor Ridge, played by Rory Kinnear, where Tony receives his diagnosis.

Kinnear’s professor is brisk, direct and clinical: medication, observation and a follow-up in a year. The scene’s force comes from the mismatch between professional pragmatism and Tony’s emotional shock. A plan exists, but Tony has not yet caught up to the reality requiring one. His sister Liz, played by Monica Dolan, attends the appointment and attempts to help, though her hovering concern also adds to Tony’s feeling that control is slipping away.

In the hospital lobby, Tony meets Emma, an American expatriate who teaches piano and has just learned she has Parkinson’s too. Linney gives Emma a more outwardly energetic response than Tony’s withdrawn one. She reads, researches and looks for support, while he avoids disclosure at school and clings to a state of semi-denial. The two are both single and lonely, but the film does not pretend a shared diagnosis makes them instant soulmates. Their connection is tentative, shaped by their different temperaments and by the fact that neither has asked for the circumstance that brought them together.

That setup makes the film a midlife romantic drama with an unusually serious complication. Their relationship includes the familiar rhythms of people gradually lowering their defenses, but Parkinson’s affects confidence, mobility and physical intimacy. The screenplay treats those difficulties frankly rather than using them as a shortcut to either melodrama or inspirational uplift. Its point is more modest and more humane: intimacy is not reducible to one form, and a meaningful relationship can be built amid limitation without pretending limitation has vanished.

Linney and Ifans make the film’s familiar shape feel lived-in

Linney has the showier role. Emma is practical, anxious, funny and determined to regain some sense of order, only to find that she cannot manage every consequence of her condition through preparation. The story gives her a gambling addiction connected to certain Parkinson’s medications, adding a destabilizing element to an otherwise sensible character. Linney brings warmth and unease to Emma’s efforts to keep herself composed; the performance avoids making her merely a resilient counterweight to Tony.

Ifans works in a more restrained register and is especially affecting for it. Tony is a career educator whose instinct is to nurture others, yet he struggles to accept help himself. The actor’s physical work is a major part of the performance, conveying a man whose body begins to move differently while his habits of privacy remain entrenched. As Tony opens up, his manner can seem emotionally lighter even as the disease causes stiffness and restriction. It is a difficult contrast to play, and Ifans finds the sadness in it without reaching for theatrical excess.

The pairing matters because the film does not make either character a lesson for the other. Emma’s proactive approach is not presented as a simple correction to Tony’s fear, while Tony’s quietness is not simply an obstacle for Emma to overcome. They each have blind spots, needs and moments of generosity. That balance gives the romance a credibility the screenplay’s more programmatic turns occasionally lack.

The screenplay’s personal foundation shows in the details

Paul Mayhew-Archer makes his feature-screenplay debut with Onwards and Sideways, bringing personal experience of Parkinson’s as well as a background in television comedy and activism. The material’s insight is clearest in its refusal to turn a diagnosis into a single, uniform experience. Tony and Emma react differently, organize their lives differently and manage visible symptoms differently.

The film also gives proper weight to Emma’s Parkinson’s ballet class. On paper, such a premise could easily become a broad comic detour, particularly from Tony’s initially skeptical perspective. Madden and Mayhew-Archer instead treat it as a therapeutic and social outlet. The class can have humor without becoming a joke at the participants’ expense. That choice fits the film’s wider approach: it looks for ways people adapt and connect without claiming that adaptation is painless.

There is a useful distinction here between sentimentality and compassion. Sentimentality smooths away hardship to produce an easy emotional payoff. Compassion acknowledges hardship while insisting the people facing it remain fully human—capable of irritation, desire, embarrassment, bad decisions and joy. Onwards and Sideways sometimes edges toward the former, but the lead performances and the script’s observational moments consistently pull it back toward the latter.

A polished television-like look, with performances doing the heavy lifting

Madden is an experienced director of actor-centered, heart-forward stories, and that sensibility suits the central duo. His approach here is not especially visually adventurous. The bright, functional presentation can feel closer to prestige television than expansive cinema, and the storytelling often announces its emotional intent clearly. Viewers looking for sharp formal experimentation or an unpredictable romantic structure may find the film too carefully arranged.

Yet a less flashy style has an advantage in a drama where the physical details are crucial. Madden gives Linney and Ifans room to register changes in posture, movement and demeanor. The camera work by Danny Cohen and editing by Úna Ní Dhonghaíle support the performances rather than fighting for attention. Thomas Newman’s score, meanwhile, pushes harder: its soaring cues can be more emphatic than the drama needs.

That score is most apparent as the film heads toward a climactic skydive, prompted by Emma’s long-held ambition. The destination is hardly difficult to predict once the wish is introduced. It is a conventional carpe diem device, and the film knows exactly which emotional buttons it is pressing. Still, the moment fits the movie’s core argument: Parkinson’s is life-altering, but it does not erase a person’s hopes, relationships or capacity to attempt something new.

For readers drawn to music-centered pop-culture projects, there is a different recent example of how a musical mood can become the focus of a release in this look at Lofi Girl’s house-music stream and vinyl compilation. In Onwards and Sideways, though, Newman’s music is not the main event; Linney and Ifans are.

What the film gets right about hope

The phrase “life-affirming” can invite suspicion, particularly when applied to a story about illness. It often signals a movie that has confused hardship with a decorative obstacle. Onwards and Sideways largely earns the description by keeping its hope conditional rather than absolute. Tony and Emma do not discover a magical answer. They receive no guarantee that the difficult parts will stop being difficult. What changes is that they are no longer entirely alone in confronting them.

That is why the film works best in small scenes: a hospital-lobby conversation after terrible news; Tony’s reluctance to tell colleagues; Emma’s effort to find a group where she belongs; the awkward negotiation of a relationship in which both parties are newly vulnerable. These moments make the broader, sweeter gestures easier to accept.

There are stumbles. One early gag misleadingly frames Tony and Liz’s relationship in a way that does not deliver a sufficient payoff. The writing can also feel structured around its issues rather than flowing naturally from character. But these are limitations of execution, not of intent, and the intent is unusually considerate. Madden’s film may be soft around the edges, but it is not careless. With Linney’s flustered resolve and Ifans’ quietly devastating restraint at its center, Onwards and Sideways becomes a compassionate portrait of two people trying to make a future after the future they expected has changed.

Key credits

  • Director: John Madden
  • Screenwriter: Paul Mayhew-Archer
  • Cast: Rhys Ifans, Laura Linney, Rory Kinnear, Monica Dolan, Nicholas Asbury, Sorcha Cusack and Ross McShane
  • Camera: Danny Cohen
  • Editor: Úna Ní Dhonghaíle
  • Music: Thomas Newman