Cal

In nineteen-seventies Northern Ireland, Cal is a young man on the edge of the IRA. One night he drives on an operation in which a policeman is killed. A year passes. Cal meets Marcella, the widow of the man who died, and falls in love with her. She does not know who he is; he has to live every day with the thing he has not said. All the tension of the film comes from that knowledge, and the narrative does not hold it back as a surprise; the audience knows from the start. The source is Bernard MacLaverty's short novel, and he wrote the screenplay as well. Helen Mirren won the best actress award at Cannes in 1984 for the part. It is John Lynch's first major film. The music is by Mark Knopfler. The story builds the conflict not through a political argument but through a guilt one person cannot carry.