The Last September

The narrative is a mess but there are many fine visuals and isolated moments of deep emotional intensity. Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith were excellent, but Jane Birkin and Fiona Shaw have some of the most powerful scenes, with their relationship problems seeming to amplify the dislocation all the characters are feeling, Irish but not Irish, English but not English. However, it is Keely Hawes' intense performance as Lois that held the movie together for me, with her coming of age, and the relationship choices she must make, personalizing the larger conflict between English and Irish that the film wants to illuminate.

This is director Deborah Warner's first film (she's an experienced stage director) and I feel she relied too much on her cinematographer, Slavomir Idziak. He did a very fine job with the landscapes and interiors, but there are too many gratuitous camera tricks and heavy-handed visual cues that don't contribute anything to the story or it's impact. Overall, worth seeing for the performances and questions of national identity it raises. The interviews with Fiona Shaw and Deborah Warner on the DVD are also worth a look.

Absorbing screen play. Not easy, not especially familiar to many of us but extremely thought-provoking, given the Anglo-Irish theme and the time in which the film is set. An excellent cast led by the magnificent Maggie Smith who simply oozes condescension, snobbery, class-ism and caste-ism, while displaying genuine affection for 'her own kind of people'. The setting of faded yet comfortable gentility is just right and the inclusion of down-on-their-luck relatives rings true also. Keely Hawes creates the right air of fragility, self-absorption and feyness. Her scenes with the admirable Fiona Shaw are powerful and reflect her dawning sense of self and of a desperation to escape, as the story unfolds. And David Tennant? Heartbreakingly real as the young would-be lover and army officer. What a very fine actor he is, despite a rather anaemic and quite unnecessary moustache. So good too to see the excellent Richard Roxburgh, playing Tennant's best pal in the army.

In summary, a film that is worth making the effort to see and to mull over. An auspicious beginning for Deborah Warner.

"The Last September" is set in County Cork, Ireland in 1920, just prior to the institution of the Irish Free State, the days of Michael Collins. (Mr. Collins and the other scions of the revolution are notably absent in this film.) The view of the film is narrowed to the trials and tribulations of Anglo-Irish aristocrats, and friends, who inhabit their country manor on their last Summer holiday in colonial Cork.

The film's strength is its microscopic cinematic views of the lives of the aristocrats and their guests. The filming is rich and startling. Small distracted moments are captured with amazing effect. Reflections in picture frame glass and windows are very compelling. The viewer is sometimes made an involuntary voyeur. This created a discomfort, an edge, for me.

Sometimes Gothic, sometimes just frustratingly slow, the film's moods are overpowering. I felt like I had been made one of the aristocratic "tribe", as they call themselves. I could experience their self restraint and quit desperation at times. I found myself twisting in my seat at these moments.

Lois, played marvelously by Keeley Hawes, reminded me of Lucy Harmon in Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty", as played marvelously by Liv Tyler. The film has trouble staying focused on her. Perhaps this is to be expected, since she represents the

elusive True Spirit of the Irish, conflicted about passion and pride, freedom and violence. Fiona Shaw captures in her character what Lois must become. The relationship between the two women is a painfully powerful representation of the Death of Self at the hands of conventions, the consequences of classism, sexism and tribalism.

The handling of the the other characters seemed cursory and prone to stereotyping. Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith did the work and turned the coal of potentially predictable rich 'county' types to diamonds of lovably faceted eccentrics.

The film is not easy. The time did not fly by. There were many laughs. There were many stunning visual and emotional moments. I guess it was like life itself, in a particular place and time.

Not everyone is familiar with the unique place of the Anglo-Irish in Ireland, and some of my companions expressed trouble following who was who, and how were they related. It took a while to get past this, I suppose. But the film itself is a compelling story of conflicting loyalties, misunderstood motives, and troublesome times. The juxtaposition of dinner parties and political violence was perfectly done. One of the most interesting "period pieces" I've seen, and of course, it's worth the price just to see Maggie Smith again.

The story is convoluted. But the strength (and the JOY) of this film is the manner in which it has so genuinely captured an era and a place, the Ireland of 1920. The camera work is unique. It came as no surprise to see that the director is a woman. Deborah Warner brings a soft and compassionate understanding to her subject which would be beyond a male. Her framing, her angles, her pacing are all perfection. She gets everything out of her actors. Maggie Smith never has been better. This is a fine and memorable film in which the story is really less important than the dream like images that support it. It's artistry.