No necessary in traumatic assault tale drama
The Meeting (15A) Verdict: Brave but misguided ★★★☆☆
arrested by and beat him gardaí. up before he was Ailbhe’s humiliation was not yet complete. For evidence purposes, she had to be photographed. It is mark of her enduring courmanity age and humanity that she felt sorry
for the man who had to take the pictures.
Seven years later, her attacker, Martin, is on probation, and Ailbhe decides to engage in what is known as restorative justice.
After negotiation, and each with a supporter in tow, a meeting between the two is arranged under the supervision of a moderator, and with ground rules agreed.
Each is allowed explain how the attack affected them. Each can walk away if they wish. Ailbhe gets the answers to questions that have troubled her, while Martin gets to explain why he acted as he did. This seems
like a great idea in principle, and they both seem genuinely to have taken something positive from the meeting.
I have no wish to belittle either the original crime or what happened in this encounter, but I’m obliged to evaluate The Meeting as a film, and I found it frustrating.
It is an odd piece of work, because Gilsenan decided that in what is essentially a dramatised reconstruction of the event, Ailbhe should play herself, while Martin is played by actor Terry O’Neill.
Both get equal screen time in a film that lasts exactly as long as the
original meeting, but I felt that Martin was treated overly sympathetically. Perhaps that’s not something that should be in my gift, especially as Ailbhe herself is so anxious to see the humanity in him.
But my contempt for any man who attacks a woman was never going to be assuaged or altered just because he was a loner as a child and never had a girlfriend.
Thousands of men find themselves in that position and never feel any urge to resort to violence, especially since there is also a class element in Martin’s actions as he wanted to bring a middle-class woman down a
peg or two. With almost the entire film taking place in a claustrophobic room, the interplay between the two — and the contributions of others that make it all feel like Martin is doing everyone a huge favour — ultimately soften the emotional impact.
Maybe that’s intentional, but by the time the final clichéd shot of Ailbhe breaking the fourth wall, leaving the studio and walking into dazzling light arrived, my strong impression was that The Meeting would have worked far more effectively as a straight documentary than it does as a drama.