Film: Wildfire

So, a successful week in the end. Hair cut, money retrieved from phishing scam, car passed its NCT with flying colours. And yesterday, I made it to the one film on locally this week that was worth seeing and I hadn't already gotten to. Just about, mind - it was in the early evening, by which point my mother had just got up, so I had a raft of chores to do for her before scooting out the door. And what with rush-hour traffic, I missed the beginning - but only just. Thank goodness for cinema advertising!

The film I was so keen on seeing was Wildfire - despite a very lukewarm review in the newspaper from the day before, when I watched the trailer I was intrigued. Nika McGuigan has apparently been missing for years - when we see her first, the Gardaí have found her (and fed her), and she's making her way home at last, to an unnamed border town. She makes for her sister's place - her sister, Nora-Jane Noone, is married to Martin McCann, and they live a sedate life in their own, modern little house. She has a job moving things around in a warehouse. Their aunt, Kate Dickie, comes round from time to time. It's all very nice and calm. And then the whirlwind prodigal sister arrives, and everything goes to hell..

The newspaper review thought it was depressing. I thought it was marvellous. Each to their own. The sisters always had a close bond, you see, and it doesn't take long to resurrect it. The suggestion is that their mother had a streak of madness - that the car accident that killed her may not have been an accident, in fact - and this wayward daughter is displaying signs of the same. As the story progresses, Irish insularity reaches its suffocating peak when the girls are chatted up in a bar by, as Nora-Jane tells it, someone whose group planted the bomb that killed 26, one of whom was their father.. and this man is on early release because of the peace process, and free to chat her up. (So I guess this is meant to be Omagh then - that sounds like the Omagh bombing.)

That's as political as it gets. As the wayward sister wreaks havoc on the quiet town, apparently accidentally, her more settled sister finds herself defending her more and more as she loses all her other support. Until things inevitably reach a violent climax..

I really rooted for these sisters. And the film seems to be doing good business - on its opening night, last night, my screen was mostly full, and the later showing was sold out. Highly recommended - far from being a standard, depressing look at a small, troubled place with bad weather, this has a real streak of otherworldliness to it, with the theme of the border figuring highly; the local river straddles the border, apparently, so you can swim with your head on one side and your feet on the other. And that sense of two worlds tints every scene. Recommended - sort of Thelma and Louise, with rain.. a great swansong for Nika, who apparently died during post-production.

I got caught up in other things last night, and it went too late to blog. I guess I'll be looking online for the rest of the weekend's entertainment. Oh, and I thought about looking at flights, now that things are sorted here - and wouldn't you know it, the Ryanair site is down for maintenence..! D'you ever feel like events were conspiring against you..?