A troubled teenage girl battles bullies at school and spooky visitations at home in You Are Not My Mother, a gripping and atmospheric feature debut from young Irish writer-director Kate Dolan. Blending pagan folklore, psychological horror and social realism, Dolan’s slow-burn thriller is a strong female-driven project both on and off screen, anchored by a broodingly powerful lead performance from 19-year-old Hazel Doupe.
Premiered in Toronto, You Are Not My Mother made its prize-wining hometown debut in Dublin last week and is currently screening in the Frighfest section at Glasgow Film Festival. This coming weekend it will compete in six categories at Ireland’s main IFTA industry awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress. Just released in Ireland, with Britain and other territories to follow in April, this elevated art-house shocker should draw a healthy cult audience, marking Dolan as an original new voice in Irish cinema.
You Are Not My Mother takes place on a North Dublin housing estate bordered by woodland, all shot in purposely drab, washed-out by cinematographer Narayan Van Maele. This is an unusually low-key suburban setting for a horror movie, though there are echoes of Let The Right One In (2008) in the eerily mundane domestic milieu. Making resourceful use of her limited budget, Dolan hooks our attention from the start with a macabre opening involving a baby and a cryptic fire ritual. This scene is only explained later, as a partial back story for the unhappy family household where solitary misfit Char (Doupe) lives with her clinically depressed mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken) and wily, watchful grandmother Rita (Ingrid Craigie).
One day, apparently in the grip of a bipolar episode, the mentally fragile Angela mysteriously abandons her car and disappears. As her family panic and police prepare to launch a missing persons case, Angela reappears at home with no apparent explanation or memory of her time away. But this new version seems much more lively than her old self, cajoling Char into frenzied musical celebrations that threaten to spiral into physical assault. Her manic mood swings and oddly contorted body movements eventually lead Char to suspect her mother has been possessed by something uncanny, perhaps even demonic.
No spoilers here but one quality that elevates You Are Not My Mother from an overcrowded psycho-horror field is its rich hinterland of Irish folklore, notably the Celtic festival of Samhain, a pagan precursor to Halloween which heralds the arrival of winter with ritual bonfires and scary face masks. According to superstition, this liminal period narrows the gap between the earthly realm and the spirit dimension, opening the door to eerie apparitions, changelings and dead souls returning. Another of its associated traditions is the Parshell, a woven cross of twigs and straw believed to ward off bad luck, which Dolan deploys as a recurring motif with vaguely Blair Witch overtones.
But the monsters in You Are Not My Mother are human as much as supernatural. Char is routinely tormented by a gang of mean girls led by Kelly (Katie White), who spitefully mocks her mother’s sickness. She also finds an unlikely ally in fellow outsider Suzanne (Jordanne Jones), but this only creates further tension. These confrontations are one of the film’s less convincing elements, a studied caricature of adolescent malice that lacks the authentically ugly sadism of real bullying. Dolan, who also appears in a small cameo, drew on her own experiences of growing up queer on the outskirts of Dublin, though any homophobic subtext is pretty opaque here. Bullies, after all, will pick on anyone they perceive as different.
Dolan keeps the full-blooded horror off-screen for most of You Are Not My Mother, only giving us ominous hints in feverish dream sequences and peripheral, jumpy glimpses. In the final act, when she switches register from slow-burn suspense to icky shock mode, the film’s subtle shadings suffer slightly by bowing to genre convention. But a handful of tonal bumps and narrative swerves are mostly absolved by striking, committed performances from the three female leads. Also worthy of special credit here is the piercing score by avant-garde composer, performance artist and sound designer Die Hexen, aka Dianne Lucille Campbell, a nerve-shredding symphony of orchestral strings and industrial drones that evokes the late, great Bernard Herrmann in places.
Director, screenwriter: Kate Dolan
Cast: Hazel Doupe, Carolyn Bracken, Ingrid Craige, Paul Reid, Jordanne Jones, Katie White
Producer: Deirdre Levins
Cinematography: Narayan Van Maele
Editing: John Cutler
Production design: Lauren Kelly
Music: Die Hexen
Production company: Fantastic Films (Ireland)
World sales: Bankside Films
In English
93 minutes
