Rose Plays Julie

This 2021 Irish film, co-directed by Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy, follows a young woman searching for her biological mother. Rose finds the woman who gave her up, but what she meets is not a reunion: as she learns why her mother did not want her, the story turns into a plan for revenge. The film asks what relationship a child conceived through sexual assault can have with her own existence. The directors refuse emotional outbursts entirely; the acting is deliberately cold, the compositions empty and distant. That manner keeps the weight of the subject away from melodrama while also keeping the viewer outside. The scenes between Ann Skelly and Orla Brady are the film's centre. The figure played by Aidan Gillen is unsettling in his ordinariness. Who it's for: viewers who like Irish independent cinema and psychological thrillers in a cold register. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding the theme of sexual assault, or who will read the emotional distance as coldness.