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UK/Ireland/France 1999
Reviewed by Kevin Maher
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
A private estate in Cork, Ireland, 1920. Sir Richard and Lady Myra Naylor welcome their English visitors, Hugo and Francie Montmorency. Sir Richard's niece Lois is dancing flirtatiously in the garden with Captain Gerald Colthurst, an English soldier. That night Sir Richard laments the worsening Irish political situation. The next day the group welcome another visitor, Marda Norton, and organise a tennis party. Meanwhile Peter Connolly, a local Republican, kidnaps and shoots dead an English sergeant.
Hugo, Marda and Lois go for a walk to a ruined mill. Here Lois discovers Peter Connolly's hiding place. Hugo declares his affections for Marda while Lois secretly brings food to Peter. Peter attempts to rape Lois but he flees when Gerald arrives. Gerald later announces to Lady Myra his intention to marry Lois, but she protests his unsuitability. Undeterred, Lois returns to the mill to see Peter who forces himself on her but is once again disturbed by Gerald. This time he kills Gerald. Hugo and Francie leave the next morning. Marda then leaves for London, taking Lois with her.
"We're Irish!" says Marda to the clearly bemused English Captain Colthurst, "We look like you and we speak like you, but we're not like you!" It's a thematic motif (a national identity crisis among the Anglo-Irish ascendancy in the 20s) that writer John Banville crudely hammers home throughout his uneven adaptation of Elizabeth Bowen's subtle novel. Later Lois is erroneously told to go back to England, while Sir Richard explains to the still bemused Colthurst that both the IRA and the Naylors are proudly Irish. Here Banville unfortunately displays a political didacticism that's absent from Bowen's novel. What is allusive and simmering under the surface in Bowen becomes explicit in his screenplay.
Hence we have the appearance of the film's Irish rebel, Peter Connolly. In the novel, Connolly's unseen presence casts a menacing shadow over the high-society dances and tennis parties Bowen's characters attend. In elevating Connolly to a major dramatic character in his own right, Banville and debut feature director Deborah Warner, an established theatre director, have unfortunately fallen back on stock IRA-movie clichés. As played by Gary Lydon, Peter can trace his lineage to earlier on-screen IRA figures portrayed by actors such as Dirk Bogarde in The Gentle Gunman (1952), Stephen Rea in Angel and even Brad Pitt in The Devil's Own. In other words, he is taciturn, dashingly attractive (in an animalistic way), and can display sudden flashes of psychopathic menace. His intrusion into the central romance of Lois and Gerald is not only less than convincing, but also destructive to the story's dramatic momentum - Lois goes to the mill, almost gets raped, comes back, goes to the mill again, almost gets raped again and comes back again.
Lumbered with this stilted narrative (the screenplay is long on stagy declamatory speeches, but short on action), Warner has instead concentrated on the film's visual style. With the aid of regular Krzysztof Kieslowski cinematographer Slawomir Idziak, she has created a richly detailed portrait of decay. Lugubrious autumnal yellows and browns merge with the putrid green wallpaper (often peeling away) covering the interior of the Naylors' home. Meanwhile the same lime-green light falls through half-open shades, as if to hint at an encroaching Irish nationalism. And it's with impressive visual panache that Warner reveals several key moments through the sepia-tinted iris of Lois' spyglass. Clearly bound to Lois' sexual desire, it allows her to observe Peter with impunity, then falls on her own lips and then her body during her first sexual encounter.
Lois herself is played with coquettish enthusiasm by Hawes. The rest of the cast get by with often sketchily underwritten roles (David Tennant's bemused English officer is an especially unforgiving part). Add an eerie tintinnabulating soundtrack from other Kieslowski collaborator Zbigniew Preisner and you have a well crafted but sadly stagnant period drama.