SECOND SCREEN

Una (15) ★★★★ is one of the most provocative films you’ll see all year, its impact diminished – just a tad – by the fact that it’s based on the play Blackbird by the Scottish playwright David Harrower that was shown at the Edinburgh International Festival as long ago as 2005.

Rooney Mara plays the unhappy young woman of the title who, thanks to a chance discovery, suddenly learns the whereabouts of the man who sexually abused her when she was just 13. Determined to confront him, she tracks him down to the warehouse where he now works and…

The film’s theatrical origins are not hard to see, with long, intense exchanges between the two characters often taking place in a single setting – sometimes it’s the warehouse canteen, at others, a ladies’ loo. Mara, playing a character burning with anger and resentment and clearly terribly damaged by what she went through as a child, is won-