‘Up Against It’ review: Trudie Styler’s aggressively sentimental tearjerker fails to make the most of stars Antonio Banderas and Eva Birthistle

Dir: Trudie Styler. UK. 2026. 124mins

Tackling a complicated story about family, divorce, illness and forgiveness, director Trudie Styler applies an aggressively sentimental approach to material that begs for a tougher, more nuanced treatment. Up Against It stars Antonio Banderas and Eva Birthistle as a bitter formerly married couple who consider having another baby to save their 14-year-old daughter, who needs stem cells from a sibling to combat her leukemia. The film enters a minefield of fraught ethical and emotional questions but consistently glosses over them, all in the name of delivering a manipulative tearjerker.

Strenuously ignores the story’s messier, more interesting implications

This is Styler’s second narrative feature following Freak Show, which played in Berlin in 2017. Up Against It boasts marketable stars, and the premise speaks to our modern age of blended families. But the film, which debuts as a Toronto Gala Presentation, will likely play better with older crowds than critics.

Eden Hamilton is Rose, a free-spirited Londoner who idolises her musician father Alvaro (Banderas) while resenting her disheveled, possibly alcoholic mother Saffron (Birthistle). The couple divorced when this teenager was just a little girl, and they both have new partners, preferring to spend as little time with their ex as possible. But when Rose is diagnosed with leukemia, her doctor Augustus (Forest Whitaker) informs Alvaro and Saffron that Rose’s best chance of recovery is if they had another child, who could provide crucial stem cells for the teen. The former lovers have grave misgivings about Augustus’ suggestion — as do their new partners — but they reluctantly move forward with the plan to keep Rose alive.

Up Against It sheds light on the phenomenon of ’saviour siblings’, who are conceived in order to provide life-saving organic material such as bone marrow or stem cells to someone else. When this possibility is initially presented to Alvaro and Saffron, Augustus has understandable concerns — namely, that this new child would be coming into a world in which the parents despise one another, practically guaranteeing an unhappy upbringing for the baby. Daringly, the exes decide that they will raise the baby as a foursome, with their new partners pitching in as coparents. But neither Alvaro’s cellist girlfriend Lara (Ursula Corbero) — whom he left Saffron for — nor Saffron’s fiance Kingsley (Arinze Kene) feel entirely comfortable with this arrangement, although they acquiesce because of how much they all adore Rose.

The screenplay from Camille Griffin and Chloe King sets the stage for a potentially fascinating exploration of the bonds of love, which can sometimes be strained by breakups and animosity and yet somehow endure. But aided by George Fenton’s soggy score and Dante Spinotti’s overly-sunny cinematography, Styler strenuously ignores the story’s messier, more interesting implications, stubbornly piloting the picture toward emphatic emotions and melodramatic twists; some of them very predictable.

When Banderas and Birthistle are allowed to demonstrate their considerable sexual chemistry, the two leads are appealing. But before then, the superficial screenplay forces Alvaro and Saffron to bicker endlessly, whether it’s about why their marriage collapsed or which parent is ’responsible’ for Rose getting leukemia. The forced humour is meant to be a cutesy counterbalance to Rose’s serious medical diagnosis, but the one-liners fall flat. And although both Alvaro and Saffron seem content in their new relationships, Corbero and Kene are trapped playing inordinately supportive partners. There is a sliver of friction between Saffron and Lara, who Saffron has never forgiven for stealing her husband, but this too is left unexamined.

As one might imagine, Alvaro and Saffron’s contentious rapport will shift over the course of Up Against It, the plot development adding further unsatisfying obstacles for all involved. Occasionally, Styler flirts with farce, but she lacks the nerve to allow her film to go in such a bold tonal direction. Even more irksome, when certain individuals behave impulsively and anger their partners, the picture insists that the wronged parties need to forgive those who betrayed them — yet another example of Styler choosing the easy path rather than pushing her characters into difficult conversations.

Hamilton starts the film as its central figure but, once Rose receives her diagnosis, Up Against It begins to shove her into the background, reducing her to little more than a narrative device to elicit the audience’s sympathy. A sensitive teenager’s life-and-death crisis ostensibly serves as the emotional engine propelling this comedy-drama, which is why it’s infuriating that Styler largely ignores Rose in order to fashion an unconvincing love story.