Rose Plays Julie REVIEW: A dark exploration of the trauma that can come with adoption
THIS sounds like another worthy issue-based family drama but co-writers and directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor toy with those expectations as their script takes some very unexpected twists and turns.
Student vet Rose (Ann Skelly) is learning how to euthanise large animals at her Dublin university. But her mind's focus isn't on the grisly lessons.
She's just tracked down her birth mother, a jobbing London-based actress called Ellen (Orla Brady).
After her initial approach is rebuffed, Rose turns into a stalker, turning up on a film set then posing as a house buyer so she can root through Ellen's possessions.
Clearly, something is not right with this troubled young woman.
After finally engineering a meeting with Ellen, she learns the dark story of her adoption.
In response, Rose takes on the persona of Julie (the name on her birth certificate) to get dangerously close to her biological father, a sinister archaeologist named Peter (Aidan Gillen).
Molloy and Lawlor stage this unusual family reunion with pitch-black comedy and nail-biting suspense.