A Frontmezzjunkies TIFF film review: Rodrigo Barriuso honours the queer elders who fought for their right to live openly, while exposing the failures of care systems that threaten their dignity in old age.
By Ross
It would be an understatement to say that I have enormous admiration for anyone who has spent a lifetime fighting for the right to be themselves, particularly someone who has had the courage to come out as transgender in the deeply transphobic world we continue to live in. That fight demands a level of strength and resilience that deserves our greatest respect, especially when it has come with sacrifices that most of us can scarcely imagine. I know something about that struggle myself. Coming out as a gay man was relatively easy for me in practical terms, but that doesn’t mean it was without its own moments of shame, discomfort, and uncertainty. I had to find my way through those feelings and learn to become comfortable with who I am. That might sound easy, but it really isn’t in this crazy world we live in. The courage it takes to come out as transgender deserves an enormous amount of respect and admiration, particularly when that journey involves challenges I can only begin to imagine. And to face the possibility of having to defend that identity all over again while battling Alzheimer’s is almost beyond my comprehension. These are conversations many of us are having with our friends and within our LGBTQ+ communities as we grow older, and the fear of finding ourselves in an elder care facility where we might have to fight those same battles all over again is very real.
Watching “Neverman“, Rodrigo Barriuso’s poignant second feature, I was struck by the terrifying prospect of having that hard-won sense of self placed in the hands of an institution that does not want to understand it, or even seem particularly interested in trying. Premiering at TIFF 2026, the Canadian film takes on the deeply affecting intersection of Alzheimer’s disease, institutional prejudice, and the needs of an ageing generation of LGBTQ+ people who fought for freedoms that are still not reliably protected in the places where they may eventually need care. At the centre of the story is Lucia, played by the extraordinary Mx. Justin Vivian Bond in their feature-film debut, a transgender activist in her seventies whose fiercely independent life is suddenly becoming difficult to manage on her own as her memory deteriorates.
Lucia has spent her life fighting for gay and trans rights, sometimes at considerable personal cost, and the prospect of moving into a nursing home is understandably devastating. Her idyllic cottage life has become increasingly difficult to maintain, and she needs a facility that can support her worsening Alzheimer’s while respecting the values she has spent decades defending. The home claims to be trans-friendly, but Lucia quickly discovers that its promises have very little connection to the experience awaiting her. Her assigned caregiver, Eleanor, played by Marie-Josée Croze, is a particularly involved nurse whose treatment of Lucia becomes an escalating exercise in indignity, from attempts to remove her makeup to the calculated insistence that she wear masculine clothing. There is an especially cruel irony in Lucia’s surname, Neverman, which the nurse, the doctor, and the institution itself seem unwilling to acknowledge, even as they repeatedly attempt to dictate who she is allowed to be. When Lucia declares that she would “rather not moonwalk back into the closet,” there is a sharpness in that declaration that carries the weight of an entire lifetime. The film captures the cruelty of asking someone to defend an identity they have already spent so much of their life fighting to live openly, particularly when the person being asked to do so is already struggling to hold on to their memories.
Barriuso, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kyah Green, gives the film a striking visual language for Lucia’s struggle to hold on to herself. The nursing home is cold, austere and threatening, its institutional atmosphere pressing against the colourful dresses and vibrant memories that define Lucia’s past. Cinematographer Rodrigo Michelangeli’s fluid, handheld camera work helps carry us between the fragile present and the flashbacks featuring Eva Everett Irving as the younger Lucia, whose vivacious energy gives those memories a powerful sense of life. These transitions have the quality of muscle memory, allowing us to feel the person Lucia has been even as her ability to recall that history begins to fail her. Bond is remarkable throughout, bringing defiant, acerbic wit to Lucia’s resistance while allowing the fear and vulnerability beneath it to emerge with heartbreaking clarity. So much of the film’s emotional force rests with Bond, who gives Lucia a fierce individuality that no institutional rule can quite contain.
There is also a welcome warmth to be found among the other residents, whose acceptance offers Lucia moments of genuine companionship in a place that has otherwise become profoundly isolating. Elias Koteas is lovely as Andor, whose friendship becomes something of a salvation for Lucia, while Deborah Grover brings a feisty spirit to Margaux, her next-door neighbour and eventual sexual companion. Their relationship gives Lucia an intimacy and affection that the nursing home seems determined to deny her. When the two women are discovered in bed together, Margaux is quickly moved away, and the institution’s intervention leaves Lucia with another painful loss. “It would be nostalgic if it wasn’t so tragic” captures something of the film’s emotional tension, particularly as the memories and relationships that give Lucia comfort become increasingly vulnerable. Kate Ferry’s production design and the costuming by Monika Onoszko help establish the distance between the life Lucia has known and the restrictive environment she now inhabits, giving the nursing home a physical presence that bears down on the characters and their attempts to find connection.
The film’s treatment of those wielding institutional power is where I found myself pushing back most strongly. Croze gives Eleanor a formidable presence, but the character leans rather heavily into a one-dimensional, controlling caricature, making her cruelty so pronounced that it occasionally strains credibility. Duane Murray’s Dr. Armand also carries an almost sinister quality. However, Taylor Love’s Hilda, a friend on the outside fighting the 90-day visitor restriction to help Lucia settle into the facility, suggests the beginnings of a much more unsettling institutional thriller, although the film ultimately steers away from that territory. I wanted the film to spend more time in the uncomfortable territory of everyday prejudice, where discrimination can hide beneath the language of policy, procedure, and professional care. A caregiver whose behaviour blurred the line between genuine concern and mistreatment, and could therefore be dismissed as an individual failing, would have made for an especially chilling presence. That kind of quiet, defensible cruelty feels painfully recognizable in the world we are living in. The film introduces enormous sociopolitical questions, and there are moments when it touches on those surfaces without fully exploring the systemic failures and everyday homophobia and transphobia beneath them. Yet the most honest and affecting material is also its simplest, as the film follows a woman struggling to understand what is happening to her and trying to hold on to herself with all her might, while the people and institutions around her make that struggle harder when they should be helping.
“I’m no revolutionary,” Lucia says, and the line carries a particular ache given the life she has lived. “Neverman” is, in its own way, an act of rebellion and recognition for a generation of LGBTQ+ elders who fought for the freedoms enjoyed today and who now face the prospect of growing old within systems that may still be shaped by the prejudices they challenged. Barriuso’s film is an essential and beautifully poetic love letter to those lives, even when its storytelling occasionally pushes its antagonists too far or leaves some of its larger questions insufficiently explored. Yet it is Bond’s Lucia who stays floating in my mind to this day, still reaching for the dresses, the friendships, the memories, and the hard-won identity that make her who she is. I don’t want any of us to reach an age when the care we need comes with the expectation that we must once again explain, defend, or conceal who we are. Alzheimer’s may be taking pieces of Lucia’s history, but the film gives us a powerful sense of the woman who lived it, and of the dignity she deserves to retain.
