Ruby’s Choice review, Jane Seymour in a family drama

Ruby’s Choice is a small family story out of Australia. Jane Seymour stars as Ruby. She’s suffering from dementia and her family struggles with how to help her and care for her.

In Ruby’s Choice, Ruby’s daughter Sharon (Jacqueline McKenzie) flatly refuses to face her mother’s situation. Ruby loses her car. Then Ruby sets fire to her house by forgetting she’s got food on the stove. Sharon can no longer ignore the facts.

Sharon, her husband Doug (Stephen Hunter) and their teenage daughter Tash (Coco Jack Gillies) bring Ruby to their house. Sharon and Doug have money problems and can’t afford the very expensive home health care Ruby needs. They both work full time and need someone home with Ruby.

They decide to take Tash out of school, with the permission of the school principal to let her work from home. Tash got the job of watching over Ruby until they could figure out the finances of getting her help. The red tape was overwhelming and the help was limited.

Doug’s brother Ken (Brendan Donoghue) and his angry teenage son Ned (Rory Potter) show up at their doorstep needing a place to stay because of problems at home. Having them in the house forces Ruby and Tash to share a bedroom. Tash learns all sorts of family secrets from Ruby’s late night episodes.

The family dynamic changes a lot as Ruby worsens. If they can’t get help will they have to put her in a home? They don’t want to do that. Drama, shifting family relationships, and hard choices keep the story interesting and moving forward. The final decision about what to do came out of a family meeting but was considered Ruby’s choice.

Jane Seymour was terrific in this, but so was Coco Jack Gillies. It was a well done portrait of how dementia can affect a family.

The coda at the end jumped ahead seven years and I thought it was preachy and too editorial. They used a different actor to play seven years older Tash instead of aging Coco Jack Gillies with make up. That seemed odd and unnecessary to me.

Overall it was a touching family story about love and caring. The actors were excellent. The film is streaming on Prime Video.