Clare Dunne’s stirring performance powers ‘Herself’
Clare Dunne was inspired to pen “Herself” after hearing from a friend whose landlord was throwing her and her three children out of their home in a month, forcing them to move into a single room in her parents’ home.
Yet the Irish actress’ powerful performance feels so personal that it’s a little surprising the story told within it isn’t at least semi-autobiographical in nature.
While the Phyllida Lloyd-directed film — about a woman struggling to find a safe-and-affordable housing situation in Dublin for herself and her two young daughters after leaving her abusive partner — is a bit formulaic, it nonetheless stirs something inside you.
After a brief run in theaters, the film land’s on Amazon’s Prime Video platform this week. Sandra (Dunne) is struggling to make ends meet, working two jobs and existing with her two girls — Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara) and younger sister Molly (Molly McCann) — in a hotel room paid for by the government.
Her ex, Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson, “Love/Hate”), gets regular visits with his daughters, but it appears the court has mandated that his parents be present with them. While Emma always is excited to see her father, Molly is anything but, which could prove to be a problem for Sandra.
Throughout “Herself,” we get glimpses of how Gary treated Sandra, so it’s easy to see why she is sympathetic to a young girl that never wants to leave her side to spend time with her father.
Gary very much wants his family back, and he regularly tries to convince Sandra they simply should go back to living together.
“What are we doing, Sandra?” he asks. “Do you think this is good for the girls?”
“No” is her response, but she doesn’t say it in the way he wants to hear it.
Inspired by a bedtime story Emma tells her, Sandra looks into the possibility of building a simpleand-affordable house herself. She even has a pitch for a woman in the housing office: instead of paying for the hotel room each month, loan her the money to build the home and then charge her rent. (The woman isn’t interested.)
While there is a do-ityourself message in “Herself,” Sandra cannot make this dream come true without help. Fortunately, she gets it, most notably from Peggy (Harriet Walter, “Killing Eve”), whose house she cleans and who knew her mother, and from Aldo (Conleth Hill), a contractor who has a past with Gary.
Even with a small army at her back, building and
moving into this house will be no small task, especially because Sandra decides to keep it a secret from the government for the time being.
Largely a theater actor, Dunne has a professional past with Lloyd that includes the former performing in the latter’s all-female state production of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV.” Dunne’s work in “Herself” is so impressive that it’s particularly enjoyable — but also revealing — to hear Lloyd’s
initial impression of her, formed when Dunne auditioned for her production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”
“I thought it was the worst audition in the world,” Lloyd says in the production notes for “Herself.” However, she adds it was “an incredible moment of seeing an actor who is completely themselves, who closes the gap between themselves and their character.”
For her part, Lloyd — whose film credits include
“Mamma Mia!” and “The Iron Lady” — keeps “Herself” from being weighed down by Sandra’s hardships without minimizing them. It is quite engaging for a film with a significant quotient of darker subject matter.
Credit for that also should go to the script cowritten by Dunne and Malcolm Campbell (“What Richard Did”).
While it is Dunne’s performance that drives “Herself,” we can’t go on without noting how fun it is to see Hill — a mainstay on “Game of Thrones” as Lord Varys — play a character overseeing the construction of a house and having a brew or two. (Because of the bald Varys, it’s always a bit of a shock to see the Irish actor with a full head of hair.)
Returning to the subject of Dunne, though, we hope there’s more film work in her future.
“Herself” is rated R for language and some domestic violence. Runtime: 1 hour, 37 minutes.