‘Freeheld’ is weepie boosted by Julianne Moore and gay rights fight

Hester, a New Jersey police lieutenant, and her registered domestic partner, Stacie, battle to secure Hester’s pension benefits in the film, when she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. The based-on-fact story of a dying New Jersey police detective who in 2005 fights to leave her pension to her domestic partner, “Freeheld” is a politically correct romantic weepy that plays in 2015 like a self-congratulatory victory lap for gay rights in general and same-sex marriage in particular.

Freeheld comes from a passionate place, particularly when it lingers on the quieter moments between Moore and Page as a couple whose life was thrown into intensely public upheaval just as they were attempting to start it together, but it’s also a film in desperate need of a consistent tone or focus. Page and Moore are excellent as Stacie and Laurel (seriously, Ellen Page has a sad face to rival Claire Danes’s “crying imminent” signature move). “And it was meaningful for me to talk to Ellen about her experiences, and for her to talk about what it means to be closeted and to then come out, and the repercussions in your personal life and in your professional life”.

The Juno actress revealed she was gay in a speech in February a year ago, saying she was ‘tired of lying by omission’. “But, for me, it’s first and foremost a love story”.

“This is a true story and these are real people”, Moore told DeGeneres. When this photo of her frizzy, woke-up-like-this hair popped up, we honestly thought it was a joke-but we’ve since confirmed with one of her hairstylists that this is actually her real hair texture.

“How could I face my family and friends?” “I just like to rock my summer hair”.

‘And somebody said to me…you did that to your hair!

“I’ve existed in closeted relationships, and I know what it’s like and it’s painful”, says Page, who came out as a lesbian in 2014.

Moore, 54, called this ‘do her “summer hair”. “I just have to wait for fall to come and for someone to blow it out for me”, Moore responded.

Starring Julianne Moore, Ellen Page and Steve Carell. “Do you use conditioner?” she inquired, voice laced with concern.