Second Spring review: A brave film about agency and cognitive decline

In Second Spring, an archaeologist who has developed a lesser-known form of dementia that alters her personality, unmasks her new life – to the dismay of friends and family

By Francesca Steele

Second Spring

Andy Kelleher

Digital release in February on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon

IF YOU want a maudlin film about the devastating effects of early onset dementia, you might be better off with Still Alice, which tracks the life of a 50-year-old professor following her Alzheimer’s diagnosis and for which Julianne Moore won a Best Actress Oscar in 2014. In that film, despite deteriorating to the point where she cannot recognise her own daughter, Alice clings to the remnants of her old self. She is, ultimately, still Alice. …