NORA

Ireland - Germany 1999 / 35 mm / Color / 106 min.

One of the great literary love affairs of the 20th century began in 1904 when the 22-year-old budding literary genius, James Joyce, saw chambermaid Nora Barnacle in a Dublin street and was instantly smitten. It was a relationship that would endure until his death at 59, defying convention and class, weathering poverty, his obsessive jealousy, and her disquiet at having their intimacies transmuted into his work. The film recounts how spunky Nora, faced with being sent to the local convent and unwilling to be controlled, runs away to Dublin. Then, just when she is beginning to see the Irish capital as another prison, she meets Joyce and is left reeling, but never doubts that they are meant to be together. When Joyce talks of escape, she decides to go with him, knowing that their only hope is to leave Ireland. In Trieste, Roberto Prezioso, a newspaper editor, encourages Joyce's writing and sees Nora struggling to come to terms with her new life. Later, Joyce, fascinated by desire and betrayal, begins to push Nora into an affair with Prezioso. When she leaves with the children, Joyce follows her to Galway, fearing that he has destroyed her simple, instinctive love for him. Susan Lynch is wonderful as Nora, spiky and soft, chilly and warm, tragic and hilarious, always lit by genuine fire. -- Peter Preston (London Observer)

Script:  Pat Murphy, Gerard Stembridge.    Phot.:  Jean-Fran�ois Robin.    Ed.:  Pia di Ciaula.    Mus.:  Stanislas Syrewicz.    Cast:  Ewan McGregor, Susan Lynch, Peter McDonald, Andrew Scott, Kate O'Toole.    Prod.:  James Flynn, Tracey Seaward, Volta Films / Metropolitan Films, t�l.: (353-1) 286 2971, fax: (353-1) 276 9471, e-mail: [email protected] / Hamburg Film Fund (Allemagne).    Sales:  IAC Films, 23 Ransome's Dock, 35/37 Parkgate Road, Londres SW11 4NP (Royaume-Uni), t�l.: (44-171) 801 9080, fax: (44-171) 801 9081, e-mail: [email protected].    Canadian Distributor:  Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm.

Pat Murphy Pat Murphy graduated in film from the Royal College of Art in London and began her directing career with a short, Rituals of Memory. She made her feature debut soon afterward with MAEVE (1981), co-financed by the British Film Institute and RTE, the Irish state television network. Her second feature, ANNE DEVLIN (1984), played at numerous international festivals, and she followed that in 1988 with SEAN MACBRIDE REMEMBERS, a two-part documentary. She has worked in the theatre and collaborated with the Irish Film Centre and the Irish Museum of Modern Art on a number of shows.

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