Bella Ramsey is luminous in “Sunny Dancer” as Ivy, a 17-year-old cancer survivor who, 10 months after being told she is in remission, still feels disconnected from the life she has returned to. Her parents (Jessica Gunning and James Norton, both terrific in brief bookending scenes) stay cheerful and treat Ivy as normally as possible, but they worry she isn’t spending time with friends. So, they sign her up for what Ivy calls “chemo camp,” four weeks at a summer retreat for teenagers with cancer, run by Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris).
It’s like a regular camp—sleeping in the woods, corny sing-alongs, talent show—but it also has a grumpy lady delivering meds to everyone. And instead of teenage getting-to-know-you questions like “What music do you like?” and “How strict are your parents?” the conversations are, “How did you find out?” and “When did you lose your hair?” The returning campers ask about one from last year who isn’t there, and the question hangs in the air. Does “not coming back” mean doing something else or gone forever? They can check the wall in Patrick’s office, with pictures of those who have died.
Ivy feels that she exists outside of both the world of the sick and the world of the well. Her body may have recovered, but her feelings are frozen, and she would rather keep them that way than feel the pain of loss or risk experiencing any more fear, anger, guilt, and sadness. She has no interest in participating in any of the activities, making friends, or talking to the camp’s sympathetic therapist, Lucy (Shalom Brune-Franklin), and she thinks Patrick is a clueless dork. And her roommate, Ella (Ruby Stokes), only wants to talk about her plans to have sex for the first time with a hunky counselor (Louis Gaunt).
It doesn’t take long for Ivy to see that being around people who are “in the club no one wants to be in” lets her feel herself fully. Ella is not just a dreamy romantic; she represents the desire to get back to the normal part of growing up as fast as possible. Another camper’s interest in tarot-card reading is a hope for a little less uncertainty about the future. And the very dark humor is just a way to speak the unsayable—and also very funny.
Writer/director/producer George Jaques is only 25, but he has been acting in films since 2020 and has clearly paid careful attention to the mechanics of cinematic storytelling, from the structure of scripts to the placement of cameras, the selection of music (great use of the Scissor Sisters “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” and score by Este Haim), and especially the treatment of actors. As an actor himself and as someone just a few years older than his young cast, Jaques’ connection to the actors shows in the sensitivity and naturalness of the characters they play. Some roles are underwritten but come alive through strong performances, with Daniel Quinn Toye standing out as Jake, who dreams with Ivy of coming back every year and running the camp themselves someday.
The story stems from Jaques’ own experiences growing up with a mother who was ill with cancer. The screenplay, while hitting conventional, even predictable, beats, reflects authenticity and understanding, not of the disease, but of the emotional toll of living with or near people who are facing the direst health challenges. Jaques cast real young cancer survivors, and he had therapists on call during filming to support everyone. He insists this is not a movie about cancer but “about joy and young people.” Like Ivy, we may be wary at first about spending time with sick kids, but we quickly come to enjoy and then care about them.
Jaques understands that because their strongest and most complex feelings are so new, teenagers experience them with unregulated intensity. It is especially wrenching to see adolescent characters who must face devastating hardship not just for themselves but for those around them. At the very end, a deeply moving long close-up of Ramsey’s astonishingly expressive face shows mingled grief and delight, in contrast to her tamped-down refusal to acknowledge her feelings. Jaques and his young cast make a conventional story feel fresh.
