David R. Walker

Posts Tagged ‘Jessie Buckley’

Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story

Director: Sinead O’Shea

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Gabriel Byrne

Running Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Please note this film is a documentary.

Oscar nominated Irish actress Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) serves as the competent narrator with her clear and quirky commentary on life of Irish novelist Edna O’Brien in Sinead O’Shea’s riveting documentary Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story which is a must see film.

Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story tells the scandalous story of writer Edna O’Brien who was a gifted novelist but got married very young to a much older Irish writer Ernest Gebler and had two small children in 1954. At a time of non-existent women writers that were telling tales of the sexual frankness and desires of young Irish women, Edna O’Brien’s early novels The Country Girls, Girls in their Married Bliss and August is a Wicked Month caused a major stir and were immediately banned in the conservative Ireland of the early 1960’s.

What made her initial fame even more precarious was that her husband took all her royalty checks from the publication of her first couple of novels and kept them himself. He gave Edna an allowance for groceries.

Then Edna O’Brien as a novelist who by 1964 was earning enough money from her writing to become independent made the bold decision to leave her husband and move into a house in the fashionable Carlyle Square in SW1 in London. Edna and her dreadful husband were divorced in 1968 after a four year separation.

Edna O’Brien as a controversial novelist who challenged the patriarchy in Anglo-Irish society and also expertly exposed the sexual desires of young women in her ground breaking novels became a cause celeb and was the centre of a bohemian social whirl in the 1960’s that included film stars and celebrities like Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery, Joan Plowright and even Jackie Onassis.

O’Brien’s popularity as a novelist was cemented in America after the endorsement by prestigious writers like Philip Roth, John Updike and J. D. Salinger in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Heavily influenced by Irish modernist writer James Joyce, Edna O’Brien’s fame as a novelist was firmly established.

Irish documentary film maker Sinead O’Shea creates an impressive and elegant story of the life of Edna O’Brien in her brilliant documentary Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story which had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Unfortunately Edna O’Brien passed away in July 2024 just three months before the release of this fascinating story of her provocative life.

Featuring interviews with famous Irish actor Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Vanity Fair, Siesta) Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story is an interesting documentary on a female writer whose sexual frankness initially shocked conservative Anglo-Irish society and left a literary legacy which any avid reader should explore more thoroughly.

Documentaries on the lives of writers can be difficult to make but ably assisted with the tantalizing commentary provided by Jessie Buckley, director Sinead O’Shea brings to the cinema the life of a bold independent woman of letters whose novels scandalized the English speaking world and earned Edna O’Brien the moniker Playgirl of the Western World.

If audiences love literary documentaries then Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien story is highly recommended viewing and gets a film rating of 8 out of 10. An insightful film both politically and socially.

The Lost Daughter

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Cast: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Ed Harris, Peter Sarsgaard, Jack Farthing, Dagmara Dominiczyk, Paul Mescal

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Running time: 2 hours and 1 minute

Taking its inspiration right out of the equally sinister 1990 film The Comfort of Strangers, directed by Paul Schrader, actress turned director Maggie Gyllenhaal directs an entirely unsettling film The Lost Daughter all set on a remote island in Greece, populated by some fascinating characters including some menacing beach goers.

Directors seldom make purely psychological thrillers nowadays which were extremely fashionable in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It is with a stroke of luck that Maggie Gyllenhaal managed to cast the granddaughter of Tippi Hendren, the star of such classic Alfred Hitchcock films such as The Birds and Marnie, Dakota Johnson (The Social Network, Bad Times at the El Royale) alongside Oscar winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite) in The Lost Daughter.

This film is mostly shot in extreme close up, which gives audiences an unsettling intimacy with the characters involved all of whom are slightly off kilter particularly Leda, another stunning performance by Olivia Colman, who plays a lonesome middle age comparative literature professor who travels to Greece to take a break from her daughters back home.

On the exotic and hot Greek island, she has a sinister encounter with the highly strung Nina, a devilishly beautiful performance by Dakota Johnson and Nina’s extended family which are vaguely hinted to be part of some nefarious crime organization.

Leda is an emotionally damaged woman contemplating her own role as a mother, as she often reflects back to her younger self, which are featured in a series of raunchy flashbacks featuring an absolutely superb Jessie Buckley (Doolittle, Misbehaviour) who deserves an Oscar nomination for her role as the younger Leda as she is navigating motherhood and her fractious relationship with her average male partner Joe, played by Jack Farthing. For the younger Leda desires more and yearns for another existence than just being a mother to two very demanding young daughters.

The younger Leda embarks on a passionate affair with a fellow professor, a wonderfully erudite Professor Hardy played by Peter Sarsgaard (An Education, Jackie, Black Mass, Kinsey).

As The Lost Daughter weaves it’s complex narrative between the past and the present, the older Leda must confront her weird emotional impulses and her strange flirtations with the men on the island, particularly Lyle played by Oscar nominee Ed Harris (The Hours, Pollack, The Truman Show, Apollo 13) and the younger beach boy Toni played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen.

Based on the novel by the bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter is a brooding mix of menace and desire, a psychologically twisted tale of crushing responsibilities, abandonment and reconnection, held together by two exceptionally good performances by Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley.

Psychological thrillers generally do not have mass appeal, but director Maggie Gyllenhaal does a skilful job of dissecting a complicated issue around maternity and natural responsibility while casually mixes it up with forbidden sexual desire and pervasive fear.

The Lost Daughter gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is remarkable for its haunting unique quality as a cinematic gem.

Judy

Director: Rupert Goold

Cast: Renee Zellweger, Jessie Buckley, Finn Wittrock, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Richard Cordery, Royce Pierreson, Gemma-Leah Devereux, Darci Shaw, Gus Barry

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Based on the Stage play by Peter Quilter, End of the Rainbow, director Rupert Goold’s poignant musical drama Judy features a mesmerising performance by Oscar winner Renee Zellweger (Cold Mountain) as Judy Garland in the autumn of her career.

Zellweger transforms herself into Judy Garland as she becomes the film Judy with herself in virtually every scene as she battles with drug addiction and alcoholism in a desperate attempt to revive her flagging musical career in a series of shows in London in the winter of 1968 at a cabaret club in the West End, called The Talk of the Town.

With insightful flashbacks of herself as a young Judy Garland when she became the breakout child star of the 1939 hit Musical The Wizard of Oz for MGM. During this time, the young Judy played by Darci Shaw is under a strict contract by the formidable head of the studio Louis B. Mayer played by Richard Cordery. As a young star she forms an attraction to another young child star Mickey Rooney played Gus Barry. Yet the studio had the young Judy Garland on a stringent diet of appetite suppressants, uppers and downers as she always had to watch her figure, becoming a slave to the merciless studio system which exploited young actors and actresses who were under severe contractual obligations.

Fast forward to 1968, Judy Garland meets the dashing Mickey Deans wonderfully played by Finn Wittrock (Unbroken, The Big Short) at her elder and more famous daughter Liza Minelli’s house party in the Hollywood Hills. Liza is played by Gemma-Leah Devereux.

Judy is having a custody battle over her two younger children with her fourth ex-husband Sid Luft played by Rufus Sewell (Carrington, Gods of Egypt, Hercules). Her financial difficulties force her to take up a Gig in London performing at the glamorous Talk of the Town cabaret venue where she forms a veritable bond with her personal assistant Rosalyn Wilder played by Irish actress Jessie Buckley as Judy belts at some fabulous numbers on a glittering stage.

Psychologically, Judy Garland is dealing with some traumatic emotional issues while always pretending to be a consummate performer. Zellweger expertly gives a nuanced heart-wrenching performance as Judy Garland, a legendary Hollywood star in the autumn of her career who also become a champion for London’s gay community in the 1960’s.

At the centre of Rupert Goold’s film Judy is a staggeringly brilliant performance by Renee Zellweger who definitely deserves another Oscar for her excellent portrayal of a Hollywood icon. In a particularly hilarious scene with a doctor, who asks her what do you take for depression?

Judy candidly replies four ex-husbands!

Judy gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 is highly recommended viewing for those that enjoy films about Hollywood Divas. For those that enjoyed My Week with Marilyn, they will love Judy, a gem of a British film featuring a staggering performance by Renee Zellweger.