ikanboy Saw this, appropriately enough, on St. Patrick's day (along with the more interesting Omagh), and found it difficult to tune in to anybody in the movie. It does have two great actors of the UK screen: Maggie Smith (being serious, for a change), and the always fascinating Michael Gambon. They get to recite some lines that allow them to sparkle, but are really secondary characters to Keely Hawes and David Tennant, two star crossed would be lovers, who talk past each other.Set In Ireland just post the first World War, and with local sentiments rising to rid themselves of the Brits, the movie tries to show metaphorically the divide within Irish breasts. What we get instead are boorish Black and Tans, a sociopathic "freedom fighter" on the run, and a vapid young woman who wants to say yes to romance, but ends up being manhandled instead by a man who, fresh from the kill, wants to shag! Once bitten, she comes back for more and ends up bemoaning the death of the British soldier she spurned for the Irish killer.Keely Hawes is fine to look at, but I have yet to see her really grip a role. Competent, and easy to watch, she manages to get by with looks and the usual perfect English diction. Here she manages quite well to show us a self centered young woman looking for something other than a fine upstanding young man before she has to marry one. She finds a dangerous killer hiding out in the abandoned mill, and knowing full well that he has brutally tortured and killed a bullying British soldier, she decides to tarry and stand mesmerized as he proceeds to get half way through artlessly depriving her of her maidenhood. Interrupted by David Tennant, a willing suitor up against unrequited love, she staggers off half dressed while Tennant allows the killer to escape.Not to fear, intrepid Keely gets another chance to be mauled, and Tennant gets another chance to rescue the maiden who doesn't want rescuing, and gets killed for his pains. Whether Keely ever comes to her senses is not clear. She is distraught at Tennant's death, but never seems to show an inkling of how stupid and reckless she has been.Surrounding this Laurentian tale of lust between the classes are other smaller tales of love lost, and love never found. As a tale of Ireland it is small potatoes.

Karnevil-2 Slow-moving and extremely melodramatic film, but still interesting. Rare in that it compares a girl's (as opposed to the more common male narratives) coming-of-age to a nation's coming-of-age.There is a certain amount of James Joyce-ian cruelty and mocking towards the Irish, Anglo-Irish, and British identities depicted in this film. The British soldiers are portrayed as silly, superficial, self-absorbed characters. Yet they are also powerful in that they have shaped the identities of both the Anglo-Irish (or pseudo-British) family, and the lower-class Irish "freedom-fighters." Once the soldiers leave to return to the front-lines, both Irish "halves" lose their purposes and identities. The director asks harshly, "Who are you and what is left of yourselves once your audience and oppressor have left?"Likewise, the coming-of-age experiences of Lois, and "the woman passing out of her prime" story of Marda (played really well by Fiona Shaw) are also critically assessed. Lois is just beginning to discover the power (sometimes dangerously misdirected) that comes with female sexuality, while Marda is experiencing the powerlessness of female aging. Again, the director makes the point that identity cannot sustain on the outside; it must come from within.*******Spoilers*******Unlike the Irish and the Anglo-Irish family, however, Lois does possess a very strong inner core of identity that remains untouched, and it is not because she is oblivious to or uninvolved with the complicated social, political, religious, and economic situations that she encounters. Her strength in knowing who she is remains steady throughout. Therefore, the fact that she leaves Ireland at the end of the film can be seen as tragic. And it's an extra dig that she leaves for America. The U.S. during the 1920s was generally regarded as place where you forgot where you came from so that you could become an "American." But had Ireland - as a country, as a nation, as a homeland - become a place where someone with so strong an identity would be left unsatisfied?

George Parker "The Last September" tells of the beginning of the end of the Anglo-Irish, circa 1920ish, in Cork, Ireland by examining the clockworks of one family of privilege surrounded by rebellion, on the cusp of degentrification, and trying to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of waning denial. Beautifully filmed and visually delightful, this film sports a wonderful cast who deliver finely nuanced performances. Unfortunately the subject matter is somewhat esoteric, the story meager, and the film burrows into the moment to moment minutia; something which is both it's strength and its weakness. Those who don't get the Brits should pass on this flick. Those who do, may be enthralled by it. I know I was. (B)

hammy-3 Having tried to read the novel on which this movie was based and not enjoyed doing so all that much, this film was an unexpected delight. While Bowen's style is often tedious, Banville's adaptation moves along at a sprightly pace that belies it's tragic, Chekovian subject matter. Like BBC's Persuasion and Vanity Fair, this film tries to rescue the period adaptation from the asphixiating clutches of Merchant-Ivory while retaing a large degree of textual integrity. Banvill, who brought the Irish "Big House" novel into the postmodern era with _Birchwood_ brings a contemporary eye to this tale of Anglo-Irish Aristocrats in the Last Days of their tenure. It's wonderfully acted, with Jane Birkin giving the sort of display of gap-toothed Anglo-Saxon diffidence that made _La Belle Noisuise_ tolerable; Maggie Smith doing her usual indignant aristocrat, Fiona Shaw playing Fiona Shaw, and Micheal Gambon thankfully playing an Anglo-Irish rather than Irish character. It's a film that anyone with a casual interest in Irish history will be enlightened by and one that anyone with an eye for beauty will be delighted by.