Herself

In a year full of fine, often challenging films focused on women, Herself is a standout. The Irish film, streaming on Amazon Prime, takes on the fraught subject of domestic abuse and strikes a difficult balance between the intensely painful and the sweetly uplifting.

The director is Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia, The Iron Lady), so the approach is more traditional than, say, the faux documentary meandering of Nomadland or the bleak verité of Never Rarely Sometimes Always — both worthy efforts but neither providing much respite from their heroines’ harsh circumstances.

In contrast, Herself grants its protagonist, Sandra (Clare Dunne, Spider-Man: Far From Home), a substantial support system of other women, once she flees her marriage to Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson) after a violent attack. Most pivotal is Peggy, a physician recovering from a broken hip whose house Sandra cleans. Peggy is played by the wonderful British actress Harriet Walker (Mrs. Churchill in The Crown), and her role happily grows as Peggy’s strength returns.

Viewers should discover the central quest of Herself for themselves, so suffice it to say here that it’s about Sandra’s efforts to gain control of her future in her own way, through her own fortitude and effort. But doing it “herself” also means soliciting help, and Sandra gradually builds the network of allies she needs: her social services counselor, a co-worker and her friends, another mother at her children’s school. A more accurate title might have been Themselves.

Dunne is a sympathetic and tenacious lead, and Sandra’s interactions with her two young daughters are among the most complex and believable I’ve seen in a narrative film. It helps that the child performers are fine and unshowy. And despite director Lloyd’s past preference for larger-than-life performances, the rest of the cast is pleasingly naturalistic, the filmmaking earthy rather than slick.

Naysayers could fault the screenplay — written by Dunne with Malcolm Campbell — for granting Sandra any number of lucky breaks. But she has her share of setbacks and crises as well, and the ending, while satisfying, is no fairy tale. The film is not a template for abused women’s restitution as much as it is a gritty parable about women pulling together (with a few good men). The dialogue isn’t as rich as 2019’s Marriage Story, but as portraits of mothers finding their own way in the world, the two films would make a worthy double feature.

Grade: A-minus. Rated R. Available to stream starting Jan. 8 via Amazon Prime Video.

(Photo: Pat Redmond/Amazon Studios)