Herself: Richly poignant empowerment drama

Herself (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and vicious domestic violence

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.29.21 

There’s a strong sense, throughout this superbly mounted little Irish drama — exclusive to Amazon Prime — that star/co-scripter Clare Dunne writes from personal awareness.

 

I dearly hope that isn’t the case.

 

Sandra (Clare Dunne) and younger daughter Molly (Molly McCann) are delighted by
the progress being made under the watchful gaze of contractor Aido (Conleth Hill).

She stars as Sandra, a single mother with two young daughters, who has just escaped her possessive and abusive partner, Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson). Although “the system” has kept a roof over their heads, bouncing them from one tiny hotel room to another, she’s barely scraping by. She works two part-time jobs, to keep them fed: as a pub barmaid; and as a housekeeper for Peggy (Harriet Walter), an aging doctor for whom Sandra’s mother once worked, back in the day.

 

But these details come a bit later. Director Phyllida Lloyd, and scripters Dunne and Malcolm Campbell, open their film with a shocking sequence: Gary bloodies Sandra’s face and then stomps on her wrist, shattering it far beyond any hope of total recovery.

 

The worst part? Sandra has anticipated just such an encounter, arming elder daughter Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara) with a previously written plea for help and a code phrase — “black widow” — that sends the little girl running to the closest store.

 

Despite this, months later, Sandra’s still forced to interact with Gary, given that he gets weekend visits with their daughters. (Seriously? After that display of violence? If this is accurate, either Sandra had a crap lawyer, or Ireland needs to seriously revise its family protective services laws.)

 

And, as always is the case with serial abusers, Gary’s doing his best to wheedle his way back into their lives. Which, to Sandra’s credit, she rejects utterly. She most emphatically is not a serial victim.

 

But she is increasingly desperate, because the status quo isn’t sustainable; lacking a permanent home isn’t psychologically healthy for her daughters. Worse yet, this situation actually lends weight to Gary’s contrasting “stability,” since he’s living with his parents. But Sandra seems without options; rents are beyond her financial ability, never mind mortgages and property prices.

 

One day, a passing reference in one of her daughters’ bedtime stories proves inspirational: Could she build her own home? (Dunne was inspired, as she explains in the film’s production notes, by Irish architect Dominic Stevens, who with friends constructed a wooden self-build in 2012, for roughly $33,000.)

 

Seductive as this notion is, money remains an issue. During an exchange with a bureaucratic clerk that brilliantly illustrates the ludicrous flaws of the welfare system, Sandra accurately argues that a one-time loan would be far cheaper to the system, than the ongoing costs associated with hotel expenses … and gets nowhere. It’s a shrewdly scripted shake-your-head exchange.

 

As the song goes, You’ve got to have friends. And, at this bleakest of moments, Sandra discovers that kindness truly does exist in the world.

 

Dunne is sensational in her feature starring debut: shatteringly persuasive during Sandra’s bleakest, most helpless moments, when she positively radiates despair. Yet she’s no less plucky and determined: a character who owns — and retains — our emotional involvement, from the moment we meet her.

 

Dunne also is terrific during the warmly intimate scenes with young O’Hara and Molly McCann, as daughters Emma and Molly. Both little girls are too precious for words, and Lloyd guides them through some truly daunting highs and lows. At one moment they’re effervescent and giggly, like best friends sharing a secret; then, in a heartbeat, they’re sober and — when in their father’s orbit — wary, even frightened (with ample justification).

 

Walter — an impressively busy actress likely recognized from Downton Abbey, The Crown and Call the Midwife — is equally compelling as Peggy. At first blush, she seems merely a mildly cranky and aloof employer, but — as the story progresses — we get a sense that she and her adult daughter (Rebecca O’Mara) may recognize Sandra’s toxic dynamic with Gary from first-hand experience.

 

At this point, Walter grants Peggy compassion, sensitivity and a willingness to help. Indeed, she solves the issue of property prices in a simple yet unexpected manner.

 

Conleth Hill — immediately remembered as Lord Varys, in Game of Thrones — is a quiet hoot as Aido Deveney, an independent building contractor who is sympathetic but can’t help, for a variety of reasons. Seriously, he insists: just can’t do it. Well … maybe a little. And a little more. And…

 

Hill’s heavenward gazes, slow takes and long-suffering sighs get ample use, as Aido patiently educates Sandra in the skills — and pitfalls — of full-scale construction.

 

Daniel Ryan, Erika Roe, Dmitry Vinokurov, Mabel Chah and Aaron Lockhart are a boisterous bunch as the friends and hangers-on who gravitate to the project.

 

Anderson, finally, is terrifying as Gary. His insincere smile is predatory, his eyes like cold, dead things. Absolutely the stuff of nightmares.

 

Much of this film’s power comes from the sense that these are actual people, rather than actors playing a role. The fact that these performers likely aren’t familiar — Walter and Hill perhaps aside — has something to do with that, but it’s mostly attributable to the graceful finesse and subtlety with which Lloyd handles her cast. No surprise: She guided Meryl Streep to an Oscar, for 2011’s The Iron Lady.

Lloyd’s new film resonates. Much of that is due to its slice-of-life verisimilitude — obviously, the United States isn’t alone with its housing crisis — and also to Dunne’s portrayal of a truly indomitable spirit. More power to her, and to Herself.