Herself (2020)
Country: EIRE/GB
Technical: col/2.39:1 97m
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Clare Dunne, Harriet Walter, Cathy Belton
Synopsis:
An Irish mother of two moves into temporary accommodation to flee her abusive husband, but despairs of ever having a home for her daughters. Hope comes in the crazy idea of building her own house, and her employer's offer of a piece of land at the bottom of her garden.
Review:
Lloyd mixes Dardennes-style handheld aesthetics with a more sentimental narrative of society being defined by people coming together in common cause. We also, of necessity, lose that unity of time that marks out the Belgian brothers' work, and the film ranges about unpredictably with little indication of how time has elapsed, while at others using shock cuts to evoke the still raw trauma of past experience. With the movie's reality thus circumscribed and edited through Sandra's viewpoint, success comes through performance (Dunne very good indeed) and emotional heft (in particular the scenes with Walter), but we are left with a sense of having got nowhere.
Country: EIRE/GB
Technical: col/2.39:1 97m
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Clare Dunne, Harriet Walter, Cathy Belton
Synopsis:
An Irish mother of two moves into temporary accommodation to flee her abusive husband, but despairs of ever having a home for her daughters. Hope comes in the crazy idea of building her own house, and her employer's offer of a piece of land at the bottom of her garden.
Review:
Lloyd mixes Dardennes-style handheld aesthetics with a more sentimental narrative of society being defined by people coming together in common cause. We also, of necessity, lose that unity of time that marks out the Belgian brothers' work, and the film ranges about unpredictably with little indication of how time has elapsed, while at others using shock cuts to evoke the still raw trauma of past experience. With the movie's reality thus circumscribed and edited through Sandra's viewpoint, success comes through performance (Dunne very good indeed) and emotional heft (in particular the scenes with Walter), but we are left with a sense of having got nowhere.
Country: EIRE/GB
Technical: col/2.39:1 97m
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Clare Dunne, Harriet Walter, Cathy Belton
Synopsis:
An Irish mother of two moves into temporary accommodation to flee her abusive husband, but despairs of ever having a home for her daughters. Hope comes in the crazy idea of building her own house, and her employer's offer of a piece of land at the bottom of her garden.
Review:
Lloyd mixes Dardennes-style handheld aesthetics with a more sentimental narrative of society being defined by people coming together in common cause. We also, of necessity, lose that unity of time that marks out the Belgian brothers' work, and the film ranges about unpredictably with little indication of how time has elapsed, while at others using shock cuts to evoke the still raw trauma of past experience. With the movie's reality thus circumscribed and edited through Sandra's viewpoint, success comes through performance (Dunne very good indeed) and emotional heft (in particular the scenes with Walter), but we are left with a sense of having got nowhere.