By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Christine Molloy | Joe Lawlor
Starring: Aidan Gillen | Ann Skelly | Annabell Rickerby | Catherine Walker | Joanne Crawford | Orla Brady
Country: ireland, united_kingdom
Year: 2021
Running time: 100
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8917170/reference
Jeff says: “Whew! Maybe the best movie I saw. A college student seeks her biological mother, learns the truth of her conception and birth, and the two of them gradually draw in the man responsible, with a stunning confrontation at the end. I was dumbstruck.”
Michael says: “Upon reading a synopsis of ROSE PLAYS JULIE it would be tempting to try to shoehorn it into a ‘revenge-thriller’ genre. And while there is that element that inherent in the plot, it plays out more like a Greek tragedy involving parents and a child. In this case, the child is question is Rose, a young woman living in Ireland, and studying to be a vet (be warned animal lovers, there are some tough scenes in here relating to animals) who is also fully aware that she was adopted, and has a strong, loving relationship with the couple who raised her, but there has always been a curiosity of the person she would have been had the woman who gave birth to her, and put the name ‘Julia’ on her birth certificate been in the picture. Although the adoption was closed, Rose now has a name and a phone number that leads her directly to her birth mother, Ellen, a successful actor living in England. To say Rose is disappointed when Julie wants no connection with her daughter, is a bit of an understatement, so Rose actually goes to England, posing as a prospective buyer for Ellen’s home which is on the market. There she meets Ellen’s other daughter, a few year’s younger than her, and Ellen herself, where she learns that Rose was born out of a violent act that Ellen only wants to put behind her.
“This revelation puts Rose on a different path, one where she tracks down her birth father, an archaeologist, and poses as an actor named Julie, who has been cast as an archaeologist in a play, to get a spot on one of his digs. As the pieces all start to come together — everything from Rose’s academic work studying euthanasia in veterinary medicine, Rose and Ellen slowly developing an actual relationship while Ellen is shooting a show in London, and ‘Julie’ becoming friendly with archaeologist, Peter — it seems pretty clear where things are heading, but things don’t go quite as planned, bringing us to a dark conclusion.
“The writing/directing team of Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor have delivered a elegant, well-structured fourth film together, and one that by all accounts is their most accessible. That may be true, but the pace is still deliberate, and the camera work a little on the artsy side, and it revels in the taut writing, and the strong acting by the three principals, Ann Skelly as Rose, Orla Brady as Ellen, and Aiden Gillen as Peter. This is one intriguing #MeToo drama that was actually conceived before the movement, but is handled beautifully and powerfully in a way that doesn’t take away from the horror and violence of the story, but doesn’t sensationalize it either. 4 1/2 cats“