![Keeley Hawes](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjQwMDAxYTgtNzE2Ny00YWI3LWFkNWEtYzE3ODE2ZWVjZjkyXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODg4NDgyOTA@._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,47,500,281_.jpg)
With her first feature "The Last September", gifted British theater director Deborah Warner displays an adroit facility with actors, a subtle, layered visual style and a strong command for the material. But her adaptation of Elizabeth Bowen's novel about the vanishing world of Irish aristocrats set against the violent skirmishes between British security forces and Irish revolutionaries in 1920 Ireland suffers from a script that is both too opaque and too obvious in laying out its meanings.
The film dramatizes the conflict as a crude metaphor over the heart of Lois (Keeley Hawes), the beautiful though misdirected niece of Sir Richard Naylor (Michael Gambon) and Lady Myra (Maggie Smith), whose divided loyalties are split between the pleasant British police officer Colthurst (David Tennant) and rogue Irish fighter Peter (Gary Lydon). Warner capably individualizes the secondary players (Jane Birkin, Lambert Wilson and Fiona Shaw) though John Banville's script is fatally indecisive in establishing any credible emotional interplay; the scenes rush from character to character, but never quite develop.
Warner is more successful at buildup and anticipation, using the escalation of violence to reveal the hard fissures in the loss of privilege and diminished status experienced by its character. The film's greatest virtues are the Polish cinematographer Slawomir Idziak's bold, painterly images of a visually resplendent Irish countryside in County Cork and the use of this landscape to suggest interior discord. However, Warner commits a considerable mistake in consciously replicating moments and images from Idziak's work with Krzysztof Kieslowski, in particular the use of green filters, shallow depth of field and space-disorienting lenses the cinematographer deployed to far greater and more emotionally devastating effect in respectively "A Short Film About Killing", "The Double Life of Veronique" and "Blue".
The film dramatizes the conflict as a crude metaphor over the heart of Lois (Keeley Hawes), the beautiful though misdirected niece of Sir Richard Naylor (Michael Gambon) and Lady Myra (Maggie Smith), whose divided loyalties are split between the pleasant British police officer Colthurst (David Tennant) and rogue Irish fighter Peter (Gary Lydon). Warner capably individualizes the secondary players (Jane Birkin, Lambert Wilson and Fiona Shaw) though John Banville's script is fatally indecisive in establishing any credible emotional interplay; the scenes rush from character to character, but never quite develop.
Warner is more successful at buildup and anticipation, using the escalation of violence to reveal the hard fissures in the loss of privilege and diminished status experienced by its character. The film's greatest virtues are the Polish cinematographer Slawomir Idziak's bold, painterly images of a visually resplendent Irish countryside in County Cork and the use of this landscape to suggest interior discord. However, Warner commits a considerable mistake in consciously replicating moments and images from Idziak's work with Krzysztof Kieslowski, in particular the use of green filters, shallow depth of field and space-disorienting lenses the cinematographer deployed to far greater and more emotionally devastating effect in respectively "A Short Film About Killing", "The Double Life of Veronique" and "Blue".
- 5/19/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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