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‘Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story’ Review: Well-Timed Doc Reads Between the Lines of the Late Novelist’s Life
The Irish author is the subject of a straightforward doc with lyrical touches, featuring final interviews with O'Brien, as well as those who knew her.
“Glitz” is if anything an understatement: The film opens with something of a roll-call of O’Brien’s famous friends, showing the celebrated Irish author in her prime rubbing shoulders with the likes of Paul McCartney, Shirley MacLaine, Sean Connery, Jane Fonda, Judy Garland and Laurence Olivier. She bags her first magazine column, 600 words a week on subjects suitable for a female readership, and meets a fellow James Joyce fan some 20 years her senior, which spells trouble when her family learns of the affair through the splendidly old-fashioned mechanism of an anonymous letter left on a bicycle seat. Blending evocative archival footage, audio (Jessie Buckley reads her letters and diaries) and new talking-head interviews (including with the likes of Gabriel Byrne, as well as O’Brien herself), director O’Shea collages together an accessible look at a life seemingly lived to the full.
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