Herself Is a Moving Narrative of Community and Resilience

Herself is an elegantly rendered depiction of grief and resilience. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, written by Malcolm Campbell and Clare Dunne, and starring Dunne, it portrays a family struggling to rebuild after domestic violence and the community that forms around them in the process—as well as the impossible situations survivors of abuse are put in and the ways the state often fails as a safety net.

Ruby Rose O’Hara, Clare Dunne, and Molly McCann in Herself. Pat Redmond/Amazon Studios

After escaping ongoing abuse from her husband, Sandra (Dunne) is living out of a hotel with her daughters, Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara) and Molly (Molly McCann). Sandra has an order for protection, but it requires her to live in a different county from Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson), so between the commute to the girls’ elementary school, her two jobs, and making sure Gary’s visitation rights with the children are honored, she’s constantly exhausted. Government assistance (the film is set in Ireland) is helping her make ends meet, but her social worker, Jo (Cathy Belton), is clear that Sandra needs to be scrupulously careful not to land in a paradoxical financial system in which she has too much for government assistance but not enough to actually live on.

During a fruitless and demoralizing search for permanent housing, a wild seed of an idea sets in: what if Sandra could simply build her own house? An internet rabbit hole brings her to Ciaran Crowley (Sean Duggan), a man who has designed a house that can be built for only €35,000. She starts researching building materials and techniques as well as viable sites and brainstorming how to solve some major problems. One is that she doesn’t have €35,000 or a plot of land, and if even if she somehow got them she’d need to give up the government assistance before the foundations were even laid. Another is that she has no construction experience, and that price tag doesn’t begin to cover labor costs.

Harriet Walter as Peggy. Pat Redmond/Amazon Studios

The next steps come together a bit conveniently in terms of plotting: one of Sandra’s jobs just so happens to be as a cleaner for a wealthy woman who just so happens to have a plot of unused land and €35,000 to loan, and she just so happens to run into a gruff but kind former contractor at the hardware store, who just so happened to previously work with her husband. However, the movie keeps us so closely tied in with Sandra’s desperation and determination that these advancements don’t feel easy emotionally. She is constantly aware that relying on the generosity of others is a huge risk and that she needs to hide this project from Gary and the government assistance office if she’s to have housing while it continues. Gradually the team expands to include the contractor’s son (Daniel Ryan), a fellow parent at the girls’ school (Anita Petry), and a young coworker (Ericka Roe), who also brings a gaggle of her peers on board. As the building progresses, Sandra’s situation becomes both more hopeful and more complicated.

In a nice parallel to the story itself, the movie does an excellent job of featuring a strong central performance without losing the network of supporting performances that hold it up. Though Dunne has worked in film before, the majority of her acting background is on stage, and it shows beautifully in the grounded presence she brings to the complicated emotional arc of her character. Similarly, Harriet Walter as Peggy, the owner of the land, brings depth and clarity to a role that easily could have been one-note. The scenes in which she affirms Sandra’s choices and strength are some of the most powerful in the movie, and the wry wit she seems to effortlessly infuse into every moment keeps the tone from sinking into cheesy inspiration porn. From Aido (Conleth Hill), the reluctant contractor, to young Emma and Molly, the home-building team becomes a representation of the vitality and richness of intergenerational effort and community, which also keeps it far from being an ode to individualistic grit and bootstrap-pulling.

Dmitry Vinokurov, Aaron Lockhart, Conleth Hill, Erika Roe, Clare Dunne, Mabel Chah, and Daniel Ryan in Herself. Pat Redmond/Amazon Studios

It came as a surprise to learn that the director of this stripped-down, intimate story also directed Mamma Mia! and The Iron Lady, two films quite different from each other and from this movie. Visually and tonally, Herself is naturalistic and close to the bone. The well-crafted lack of flash fits the content, keeping the focus on Sandra and her team and emphasizing both the gravity in the serious scenes and the camaraderie and peace in the joyful ones. Paired with the acting and Campbell and Dunne’s script, there’s a powerful sense of rich context behind each character without bogging the narrative down with backstory.

The domestic violence in the movie is handled sensitively as well. The one scene in which it is explicitly depicted is brief, and though it’s occasionally referred to in flashbacks, the movie is firm in its commitment to avoiding gratuitous violence, and the flashbacks serve primarily to show how the abuse is still affecting Sandra in the present. The focus here sticks closely to the material and emotional challenges Sandra faces after leaving Gary as she navigates an often unsympathetic legal system while grappling with her trauma and parenting her daughters.

Pat Redmond/Amazon Studios

Near the end of the film, Aido invokes the Irish word meitheal when reflecting on the team’s efforts, describing it as a group of people who are called together to help and in so doing are helped in return. The movie’s title is almost misleading; Sandra doesn’t change her circumstances by herself, but that’s the real beauty of the story. Herself is a lovely tribute to the concept and a powerful showcase of the contributors’ skills.

If you are experiencing domestic or intimate partner violence and looking for help, you can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.