Film review: Emily Watson and Paul Mescal excel in God's Creatures
God's Creatures: a tale of protection, choices and consequences
- God’s Creatures
- ★★★★☆
The 'Irish Mammy' has become something of a stereotype over the years, and even a figure of fun, but (15A) suggests that Irish mothers are far more complicated than the clichés allow.
Aileen O’Hara (Emily Watson) is a no-nonsense manager of a fish processing plant in a small village in Ireland’s northwest, a woman with a flinty exterior who was long ago deserted by her feckless son Brian (Paul Mescal). When the prodigal arrives home unannounced from Australia, and declares an ambition to revive his grandfather’s old trade of farming oysters, joy is unconfined — but then Brian is accused of sexual assault by his old flame Sarah (Aisling Franciosi).
Written by Shane Crowley and directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, the 1980s-set offers a gripping exploration of the mother-son dynamic, placing Aileen in what she perceives to be an impossible moral dilemma: effectively, it is Aileen’s word against Sarah’s as to Brian’s movements on the fateful night.
A mother’s instinct, of course, is to protect her son — but can Aileen really trust Brian? Is he the same person he was when he left home? And why was he obliged to leave Australia in such a hurry, and return home to a rural Ireland that offers no real prospects? These and other questions torture Aileen and draw the viewer deeper and deeper into the moral quagmire she has created, ratcheting up the tension as the story drives onwards to its inevitably tragic climax.
Emily Watson is superb here as the multi-faceted, emotionally inscrutable Aileen, and she gets excellent support from Paul Mescal, Declan Conlon as Aileen’s estranged husband Con, and Aisling Franciosi as the young woman who is devastated not only by her attacker, but by a village that affects indifference to her ordeal.
(cinema release)
