Oscar winners a year ago, Moore and Redmayne back in Toronto

Given how moving and absolutely devastating the first trailer was, it’s a bit of a relief to see a lighter moment depicted in the first clip.In any case, I’m girding my loins for a total sobfest when the film debuts next month. Had they been a homosexual married couple, Laurel leaving her pension to Stacie would have been an automatic option.

Lionsgate has released a new teaser scene from Freeheld, the upcoming Julianne Moore/Ellen Page film about a police officer who fights for her partner to get her benefits even as she struggles with terminal cancer. In mechanical fashion, the drama pushes all the required buttons of indignation, anger, triumph and sorrow, with Moore and Page each getting a speech to demonstrate who they are and why their love deserves respect and fundamental rights.

Freeheld presents this cliché story as an alternate universe version of the actual, real-life story of Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree.

They were not ready in 2008 to commit to, and support, gay marriage.

The way this concept is played out in the film is handled rather gracefully and with the utmost degree of heart.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, her hair!'” said Moore.

That helped Moore film a poignant scene in Freeheld, where Andree holds Hester in her arms and uses clippers to tenderly remove the final, wispy remnants of the painfully frail woman’s hair. She’s considered a member of the upper echelon of present day acting for good reason.

“[Freeheld is] a celebration of the changes and the incredible distances that we’ve come in a relatively short period of time”, she smiled. That is someone’s life. Page, likewise, avoids any prospect of making her character one-note, proving herself capable of doling out some of the surprising features of her character, such as her expertise with cars, never straining plausibility. Michael Shannon, Steve Carell, Josh Charles and Luke Grimes also star. Everything he says seems to be selected from a host of things he wishes he could say.

“It’s much easier to discriminate when you perceive someone or something as ‘other, ‘ but when you are exposed to it in a more proximate way – this is your sister, this is your neighbour, these are the people that you live with – that everyone’s just the same”, she explained to The Hollywood Reporter. Shannon’s superb (and dryly hilarious) as the no-nonsense Jersey cop who receives a fast education in gay rights after Laurel finally comes out to him. Among these mainstream titles (at least the ones I’ve seen), Freeheld could be the best of the bunch.