... but ultimately empowering, inspiring, enabling and encouraging, that from a beaten and broken relationship, with all the odds overwhelmingly in opposition, the spirit and drive to fight and survive remains, through an incredibly realistic performance from Clare Dunn who builds a performance of immense authenticity, courage and determination.

"Herself" (2020 release from Ireland; 97 min.) brings the story of Sandra and her family. As the movie opens, Sandra is playful with her 2 young daughters , but when her husband Gary gets home, he is enraged and beats her up badly. Sandra and her girls leave Gary and find temporary shelter with government help. But things are tough. Sandra works 2 jobs, and still can barely keep things together. Then one day she sees an ad for self-building a house for only 35,000 Euros... At this point we are less than 15 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from British director Phyllida Lloyd, who has previously brought us the excellent "The Iron Lady" and the original "Mama Mia". But in truth, this film is a labor of love from Clare Dunne, the Irish actress who not only plays the lead character Sandra, but also came up with the story and co-wrote the script. It is clear she gives her all in this film. Beware: this is not an easy film to watch, for a number of reasons (the spousal abuse scenes are brutal),but also because of the thick *and authentic( Irish accents, which at times entire sentences went over my head. Apart from the relationship drama, the film also shines a light on an urgent social need in Dublin, namely the lack of affordable housing, But wait, where have we heard this before? Indeed this very theme was also central to the 2018 Irish film "Rosie", starring Sarah Greene. Back to "Herself": much of the film you get this sense of dread, as if yet more bad stuff can happen to Sarah. A comedy this ain't.

"Herself" premiered at the 2020 Sundance film festival, yes exactly a year ago already. Then a little thing called COVID-19 changed the world, and wrecked the movie industry to its core. The movie was given a limited one-week theater run the first week of 2021, before it will shift to Amazon Instant Video. My art-house theater here in Cincinnati thankfully had it on its slate this week. The Tuesday evening screening where I saw this at was attended okay (about 10 people). If you are in the mood for a heavy social and relationship drama, I'd readily suggest you check this out, be it in the theater (if you still can),on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray.

Clare Dunne is quite engaging here as "Sandra", reeling from an horrendous encounter with her abusive husband who is now forced to live with her two daughters in an hotel room. She works very hour she can, including some shifts as cleaner for retired doctor "Peggy" (Dame Harriet Walter). It is the latter lady who comes up with a plan to help out - she offers to donate some land at the bottom of her extensive garden, and to loan the cash to enable the family to build their own home. Now we are not talking Castle Howard, here - it's a 35,000 Euros build your own kind of thing... She manages to recruit the help of local builder "Aido" (Conleth Hill) and gradually they embark on their task... This is a feel good film that, though it does stretch the bounds of plausibility now again, is about a woman with loads of determination to better life for herself and her family. The ensemble cast all contribute to the general sense of community that this film engenders and we are delivered of a thought-provoking lightly comedic tale. There plenty of things one could nit-pick about, but that ould rather defeat the obviously positive and uplifting purpose of the whole thing - so maybe it's best just to sit back and enjoy it.