Dir: Pat Collins | Cast: Barry Ward, Anna Bederke, Ruth McCabe, Lalor Roddy, Sean McGinley | Ireland, Drama 111’
Pat Collins’ leisurely lyrical tale of rural Ireland forty years ago is beautifully captured on the wide screen and in rather stagey domestic interior scenes were the local characters shoot the breeze and sometimes touch on more philosophical themes in the style of the Ambridge residents of the popular BBC series The Archers.
Based on internationally acclaimed Irish author John McGahern’s award-winning novel of the same name, the story centres on middle aged creative couple Joe, a writer, and his East European painter wife Kate respectively played by Barry Ward and Anna Bederke with a dash of bohemian charisma. Others include Lalor Roddy’s Patrick who pops in to supply the village gossip – but nothing too controversial to rock the tranquil tenor of this bucolic backwater.
This is a gentle pastoral affair that could have been directed by the late Terence Davies, and whose main attraction is the day to day lives of Irish country folk as they go about their business and the glorious vistas of the Emerald Isle in the changing seasons luminously photographed by Richard Kendrick all accompanied by a plangent occasional score. @MeredithTaylor
IN UK AND IRISH CINEMAS FROM 26 April 2024