23 year old Nancy Eaton was a member of the prominent Eaton family, most famous for Timothy Eaton - the 19th century merchant who founded the Eaton's Department store chain that dominated Canadian retail for a century. In 1985 she was raped and murdered by a friend - Andrew Leyshon-Hughes, the son of another prominent Canadian family who had become like a little brother to Nancy. The movie depicts the lives of both - as Nancy starts to claim some independence after the break up of her parent's marriage when she was a child and as Andrew descends farther and farther into mental illness. The version of the movie I saw was called "Deadly Friends." I think that's a more appropriate title than "The Death And Life of Nancy eaton," because the story was as much if not more about Leyshon-Hughes than it was about Nancy. Andrew was essentially a psychopath, often out of control and violent even toward his own parents, who became afraid of him and kicked him out. Nancy became one of the few people who didn't shut him out. Doctors disagreed about Andrew's diagnosis and about how he should be treated. He spent periods of time in various institutions - all to no avail, and always, finally, coming back to Nancy, his only lifeline. This was a very interesting look at mental illness and how the system can fail, and it also offered a glimpse of life inside two prominent families, so there was a little bit of a voyeuristic tinge to this.
Nancy's rape and murder was very violent and very bloody. She was stabbed 21 times by Andrew before he raped her and left her to die, and to the credit of those who made the movie none of this was graphically depicted. The movie really was more about Andrew's illness than Andrew's crime. The last scenes of the movie were powerful. In almost a dream sequence Andrew finally confronts what he did to Nancy, and there's also a bit of the story of Nancy's mother and how she tried to cope with her daughter's death. I thought the performances throughout this movie were quite good and believable - especially from Brendan Fletcher as the troubled Andrew . I was a little baffled when the movie on occasion used some very primitive animation as background - especially during scenes that depicted the Eaton and Leyshon-Hughes families spending time at neighbouring summer homes in the Muskoka Region - and I wasn't really sure what wa sbeing accomplished with that device or what the point of it was.
But that's a relatively minor quibble. Overall, this was a very good movie - probably one of the better made for TV Canadian movies I've come across - and there's not a great deal in it that could be criticized. (8/10)
