FILM REVIEW: NOLA AND THE CLONES

Directed by Graham Jones. Starring Caoimhe Cassidy, Joseph Lydon.

84 mins. Available now on grahamjones.ie and YouTube

Irish director Graham Jones has repeatedly proven himself one of Ireland’s most intriguing directors. His work is challenging and unapologetically provocative; words that also apply to his latest heroine in this exploration of women, patriarchy and power.

Caoimhe Cassidy plays the lead role in Nola And The Clones, a damning and painful rendering of the experiences of a young homeless woman in Dublin. Through her interactions with various men, all played by Joseph Lydon, Nola’s vulnerable position makes her all the more aware of the danger that men and misogyny pose. 

Like much of Jones’ work, Nola And The Clones embraces a sense of magic realism, as Nola’s encounters with these identical men are gritty and raw in their circumstance and setting, but eloquent and heightened in their articulation. As Nola sells sex but never herself, she is able to see these men clearly – their need for even more power and ego in a situation where they hold all the winning cards.

As they offer her help, adoration and attention, Nola knows that their saviour complexes come with strings attached; that their desire to see themselves as hero and benefactor reduces her to a victim.

In one stunning monologue, Nola exorcises her hate by articulating the damage that misogyny has inflicted. Her rage and pain exhausted into a flattened monotone, Cassidy perfectly captures the frustration of a woman all too aware of her powerlessness: “Do you know what we have to be? You know what you want us to be, but you don’t realise what it turns us into.”

The explicitness of Jones’ screenplay may alienate some viewers, but its razor-sharp observations of power and gender need to be heard.