VERDICT: A tentative friendship begins between a cleaner and the woman who employs her in this delicately wrought drama about relationships and their boundaries.
Lesley Conroy’s Cleaner is a film that hinges on its performances.
It was made as part of the Actor as Creator initiative, run as a collaboration between Screen Ireland and the Bow Street Academy, that is intended to allow actors to produce a short film that expresses their creative vision. In this instance, Lesley Conroy wrote Cleaner, and while handsomely directed, it bears the hallmarks of a work intended to showcase its on-screen talent. The story follows Angela (played by Conroy), who builds up an unexpected rapport with the woman whose home she is paid to maintain. Told as much through gesture and body language as through dialogue, the film crafts an impressively naturalistic camaraderie while remaining cognisant of the unspoken boundaries being crossed.
The plot is deftly charted through the changing way that Mairead (Carolyn Bracken) addresses Angela on the envelope she leaves on the countertop with her wages in. In the film’s opening sequence, it merely says ‘Cleaner’ demarcating the transactional nature of their relationship. However, when Angela steps in to look after Mairead’s children in an emergency, the professional line between them becomes blurred and a friendship emerges – before long the envelope goes from saying ‘Angela’ to being adorned with embellishments like a smiley face or a kiss. Despite this, as the two women grow closer, the audience becomes painfully aware of the potential reality check that looms on the horizon.
Conroy’s script, and the two women’s performances, do a great job of conveying this tension. As they interact with increasing ease and intimacy, the lopsidedness of their relationship is never entirely erased and beats littered throughout allow for moments of reflection or minor hesitation. Evan Barry’s compositions often frame them in close-up, allowing for maximum impact from minor gestures. The film uses a short sequence of recurring cleaning scenes – scrubbing the toilet bowl, doing the ironing – to remind the audience of Angela’s daily drudgery and the ultimate position she occupies. There seems to be a persistent danger of some about-face that would drive home the precarity of her position. It’s a precarity that feels like it flits, almost imperceptibly, on Conroy’s face throughout – and comes crashing unbidden into the narrative to devastating effect.
Director: Edwin Mullane
Cast: Lesley Conroy, Carolyn Bracken
Producer, screenplay: Lesley Conroy Cinematography: Evan Barry
Editing: Adam O’Keeffe Sound: Rob O’Sullivan
Production: A&E Creative (Ireland) Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival In English
14 minutes
