Rent Wildfire (2020)

Strong psychological drama - Wildfire review by PD

Cathy Brady's psychological drama centres on the unspoken connection between sisters Kelly (Nika McGuigan) and Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone), who share a mutual trauma. The context is a fractious, post-Brexit Ireland, but while the film at first establishes a political framework with a blistering montage of current events in the UK, it shifts into a more personal tale about women shouldering psychic damage, and who come together to reckon with the past. Whilst there's a tad too much melodrama on show as the film proceeds, Brady’s feature debut is generally a powerful portrait of women on fire, unsure of where to go in the wake of rippling tragedy. And the film itself becomes all the more tragic once, by the closing credits, it’s revealed star McGuigan, who gives a distinctly chilling and complex performance, died from cancer while the film was in post-production in 2019.

The events of the film are set in motion by the return of Kelly to the quiet Northern border town from which she abandoned her sister more than a year ago. Kelly, arriving in customs like a wounded animal, appears as a feral vagabond who’s lived quite a life on the road, and can’t readjust to the life she knew before. When she shows up at Lauren’s doorstep, she’s like someone plopped into a foreign country who can’t speak the language. Lauren, meanwhile, who holds a menial job at a robotic Amazon-type warehouse nearby (the scenes here are very good indeed), has an understandably complicated reaction to Kelly’s arrival. It’s revealed that Kelly and Lauren both have a close relationship to mental illness, as their mother was deeply unwell in their upbringing, often perched on the edge of suicide and unable to cope with the demands of domesticity and motherhood, and it's that bristly attitude toward decorum and expectation has been passed on to Kelly and Lauren.

The film veers off into various implausible directions, and the political themes introduced are a tad unsubtle, but the strange dynamic between Kelly and Lauren remains convincing - a striking scene in a bar finds the women manically dancing, in animalistic synchrony, indifferent to the eyes and ears of the tiresome locals. McGuigan’s performance is loaded with contradictions, often in the space of a single scene, and it’s very absorbing stuff, whilst Noone proves an apt accomplice to Kelly’s rage, making Lauren into a broken woman who also wields power over her sister. Kelly and Lauren might not find redemption, but these two need each other, in their own strange way - although how other people handle this is anyone's guess (I felt a bit sorry for those well-meaning people around them, notably Lauren’s perplexed partner Sean). Strong stuff.

Interesting Family Drama - Wildfire review by GI

There's a power behind this drama of siblings reuniting in the turmoil of the Irish border issues that stretch back to the days of the Troubles to the Brexit fiasco today. Yet despite the prologue of the film that highlights all the political catastrophes this is a small family drama about two sisters and their trauma over the slightly mysterious death of their mother. When Kelly (Nika McGuigan) returns home to Ireland after having been missing for a year her sister, Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone), has mixed feelings as she believed her to be dead. But they soon begin to reunite causing complex problems for those around them. This is a film about family suffering, here against the backdrop of the Irish border. The director cleverly uses the colour red as the indicator of emotions out of control in what's an interesting film, if a little baffling at times.