If you haven’t been to Ireland, one of the first things you notice is how truly sweet and helpful the Irish people are. You don’t have to earn the benefit of the doubt: it’s just given to you. No one deserves that benefit more than Sandra (Clare Dunne) in Herself. The movie is a love letter to those single parents out there, doing everything they can to hold their family together, living under extreme stress from people who don’t understand their predicament. Maybe you should move to Ireland, where if you put your mind to it, the kindly woman you’re caring for will let you build a house on her property.
Sandra is a mother to 2 adorable little girls Molly (Molly McCann) and Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara). After a harrowing escape from an abusive relationship, Sandra and the girls are in a holding pattern until the Irish government can find a place for her in Dublin to live. That means living in a hotel with two girls, working 2 jobs, and sharing custody with her abuser…until 650 people in front of her get their housing applications processed. Desperate for a place to raise her kids, Sandra researches how to build a house on your own, and hopes that the niceness of her Irish community like Peggy (Harriet Walter) and Aido (Conleth Hill) can help her build that tiny respite she wants.
Herself shares a lot of beats with a great sports movie. The first 10 minutes make it clear that Sandra is your down on her luck main character, with the odds stacked against her. But she’s a go getter; she wants to make a home for her kids! What comes next in the sports movie? 2 things: an unorthodox playing style (in Herself, the build-it-yourself house) and putting your team together (the supporting case here, all doing perfectly solid physical and thespian work). Cue the montage, in this case to all sorts of fun pop songs – a nice touch! What next? That’s right, the rival team undercuts your progress (Sandra’s husband, a vile perfect sports villain). This forces our main character to reevaluate what’s going on, before facing the rivals again in the championship (a court hearing). Can you guess what happens next?
A movie like Herself that starts out so horrid towards its really lovely main character of course is going to reward her by the end. And with the story encompassing the all too familiar difficulties about criminal justice, child rearing, and abusive relationships, the stakes are much higher than just winning a basketball game. But damn if it isn’t great when Sandra gets a win, thanks to Clare Dunne’s quietly fierce performance. And Irish accents, beautiful every time I hear them.