PARK CITY, Utah |
Sat Jan
28, 2012 4:41am GMT
(Reuters) - A tense thriller about a mother deeply entrenched in the IRA and
forced to choose between the organization and the family she loves has earned
high praise among the foreign films at this week's Sundance Film
festival.
"Shadow Dancer," set against a backdrop of a Northern
Ireland in transition, gave the
festival a lift after it premiered earlier this week following some of the
higher-profile U.S. fiction films that have failed to live up to pre-festival
hype.
The film stars Andrea Riseborough as a Belfast mother who, along with two of
her brothers, is active in the Irish Republican Army when she gets offered a
deal by an British intelligence officer (Clive Owen) to turn against her
colleagues and become an informant or else go to prison.
James Marsh, who made Oscar-winning documentary "Man On Wire," directed
"Shadow Dancer" which 1990s Northern Ireland TV correspondent Tom Bradby adapted
from his book of the same name. Marsh said he was initially reluctant to work on
the movie but ultimately won over by the idea of telling a more personal story
of the conflict.
"In Britain you have this sort of exhausted sense of the Northern Irish
troubles," he told Reuters. "But I quickly got caught up in the premise of the
story where you take a young single mother and you go and force her to spy on
her own family. It's an impossible bargain."
The moral quandary of Riseborough's character -- choosing between loved ones
and dealing with the guilt of betrayal -- are themes most audiences could relate
to, said Marsh.
Read More:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/28/uk-sundance-shadowdancer-idUKTRE80R01W20120128