Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

IRINA PALM
Directed by Sam Garbarski
Produced by Entre Chien et Loup, Pallas Film, Samsa Film, Ipso Facto Films, Liaison Cinématographique, Ateliers de Baere & RTBF Television
Written by Philippe Blasband & Martin Herron
Director of Photography Christophe Beaucarne
Edited by Ludo Troch
Music by Ghinzu
Released by Strand Releasing
Country of Origin: Belgium/Germany/Luxembourg/UK/France. 103 min. Not Rated
With: Marianne Faithfull, Miki Manojlovic, Kevin Bishop, Siobhán Hewlett, Dorka Gryllus & Jenny Agutter

A single mother and social outcast bows out of her daughter’s life and steals a peak at her daughter’s wedding through a window from the sidewalk. A bawdy burlesque showgirl with a checkered past takes her life so that her prim and proper daughter doesn’t follow her footsteps into show business. The first weepy story line is from Stella Dallas, 1937; the other, Applause, 1929. With many of the conventional taboos long gone, director Sam Garbarski takes on the challenge of modernizing the melodrama of the sacrificial mother. The most recent melodramas that have succeeded in building emotional connections with its characters have been set firmly in the past – The Notebook or the self-conscious homage Far From Heaven.

But Garbarski irreverently succeeds in bringing a very contemporary degree of shame, stigma, and dark comedy to his middle-class Madonna, frumpy widow Maggie (Marianne Faithfull, completely downplaying her rock icon status). The plot can be put bluntly: to quote Maggie, “I’m a wanker. [My grandson’s] dying. It’s a mess.” Little Olly needs experimental treatment for an unspecified disease. All his medical costs will be funded, except for transportation and accommodations for his parents and granny. The rub: the treatment is in Australia. Already Maggie has sold her suburban London home (the backstory’s a bit murky), but she vows to her son, the boy’s father, that she will get the needed six thousand pounds, even though she’s never held a job, has no skills, and will be entering the job market at an age where many are considering retirement.

Seeing a handwritten “hostess wanted” sign at the Soho club Sexy World, she meekly inquires within, almost hiding her eyes underneath her long bangs. Before swarthy club owner Miki (the sleazily charming Miki Manojlovic) shows her the door, he asks to see her hands. Impressed by their softness, he offers her a job – sitting in a cell-like, windowless room beside a glory hole. On the other side, any man, trousers down, is up for grabs – young, old, middle or working class. Maggie shares any and every apprehension a viewer may have. Slowly, she gets a grip, and lines to her station steadily grow – a spunky star is born, stage name Irina Palm. But for the fainthearted, don’t worry – a thermos (or some object) is always strategically placed while Maggie works. The club’s strippers provide the only exposed flesh. (But what you don’t see, you hear.)

Faithfull’s reaction shots, from shocked to deadpan, are reason enough to see the film. After decades of playing mostly supporting roles, Faithfull subtly and unexpectedly brings sweetness to this underworld. Her childlike performance holds the film firmly together no matter what direction it swings, and it does get a bit dramatic, especially when her son catches a whiff of how mum’s been making money.

Our plucky heroine gains a new outlook on life by stepping into uncharted waters, not unlike unemployed steel-mill workers stripping or middle-class biddies doffing off their clothes for charity, and on and on and on. However, Irina Palm is not merely saucy, but unabashedly dodgy. And it’s now official, after Eastern Promises and London to Brighton, the British capital has replaced New York as today’s cinematic sin city. Kent Turner
March 21, 2008