IMOGEN POOTS INROSE'S WAR

Mostly British series, Feb. 6-13, 2025, San Francisco
Irsh Spotlight

Imogen Poots stars as an English heiress who turned IRA terrorist and masterrminded a major art theft

Rose Dugdale, here played by Imogen Poots, was a real person who brought three cohorts to her family manse disguised as a redheaded French woman and led a huge art heist. Her father was a millionaire who was an underwriter for Lloyds of london, who owned extensive properties. While this film focuses on a major art theft by the IRA, it works skillfully on differemt times and levels, recreatig the mood of Seventies political radicalism, though it may work better in the retrospect or the rewatch than first viewing because its complexity keeps things, and its protagonist, at one remove from us.

A real art theft is involved. In 1974, Rose Dugdale and three IRA accomplices stole 19 paintings from Russborough House in County Wicklow. The paintings included a priceless Vermeer, Woman Writing a Letter, With her Maid, Rubens' Venus Supplicating Jupiter, and works by Velázquez, ainsborough and Goya. The iclusion of a Vermeer and Rose's willingness to destroy all the works if authorities decline to pay the demanded £500,000 ransom is deeply shocking.

Peter Bradshaw's positive Guardian review headlines this as a "vivid, intense biopic" with the subtitle describing it as "a cool, low-keyed drama." That's because it is both, as the IRA life was. Imogen Poots, who specializes in playing posh girls, has what is called a "coiled intensity." She's meant to be about to explode all the time, and one of her accomplices all the more so, but her commitment equips her with tight reins. As a non-Irish aly, she has to be twice as relable. She is a neophyte, untried in the ways, but she has about her the self-importance of other Seventies violent radicals we have seen in films. For her formation we see Rose at a 1972 London squat whose occupants oppose the British government. She is opposed to capitalism; to the class system she knows benefits her.

The film flips back and forth between Rose and her Irish team in their biggest heist operation (the helicopter hijacking and attempted bombing only reported), and moments of tranquility when they're remembering it and planning more. These in turn are iintercut with moments from Rose's girlhood as Rose in her complicated present fragmentarily remembers them.

Rose's associates are the elder Dominic (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), Martin (Lewis Brophy), who's a hotheaded kid, and Eddie (Jack Meade), by whom she gets pregnant. We see her interacting in a lethal manner with a poor man called Donal (Dermot Crowley) who has the misfortune of guessing that she's suspicious. Incidentally we learn that shewas at Oxford and did a master's degree on Wiittgenstein. For the art theft Rose feigns a French accent, which trips her up later.

A better film for depicting the everyday yoke of IRA cruelty and brutality during the Troubles (set in the early Eighties) is Luke Hanlon's The Troubles: a Dublin Story, which I reviewed a year ago. But this newer film with its focus on a posh girl's would-be exploits resembles films depicting the most violent radical tendencies of Europe in the Seventies, like [url="https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1338"]The Baader Meinhoff Complex [/url] (2008) and Marco Bellocchio's Good Morning, Night, (2003) showing the Aldo Moro kidnapping from the insider viewpoint of the kidnappers trapped in their suicidal commitments. Imogen Poots creates a haunting aura as Rose. There is an nterview with the real Rose in mature years with Irish televison that shows her to be less attractive but apparently more straightforward, more confident.

The Irish filmmaking duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor have been directing films together for nearly two decades, with their creative partnership The Desperate Optimists (also the name of their production company) beginning in theatre in 1992. During this time they have co-directed six features, the most recent of which being Rose's War (original title Baltimore).

Rose's War/Baltimore (original title), 98 mins., debuted Sept. 1, 2023 at Telluride, also showing at London BFI Oct., US internet and UK and Ireland theatrical releases Mar. 2024. Screened for this review for SF Motly British 2025. Mostly British Showtime:
Sunday February 9, 2025 - 4:30 pm
Vogue Theater, San Francisco

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.