On the visual triumph of An Cailín Ciúin... For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Images of Ireland, by Felicity Hayes-McCoy above.
I saw the film, An Cailín Ciúin, in the Curzon Cinema in London's Soho. It hadn’t been out long, and there were fewer than a dozen people at the matinée.
Afterwards, in the ladies’ loo, I found a woman dabbing her streaming eyes with a folded tissue. Without thinking, I spoke to her in Irish. I live my life between London and Corca Dhuibhne, so perhaps I’d remembered one of my West Kerry neighbours describing how, when Ryan’s Daughter opened at the Leicester Square Empire, he and a bunch of other lads from Dingle, who spent their days digging trenches for British Gas, had sobbed aloud at the sight of the cliffs above Dún Chaoin.
Anyway, when I saw the lady peering at her ravished face in the mirror, I said 'Iontach, nach ea?’ and was met by a smeary stare. Then, when I repeated it in English -‘Wonderful, wasn’t it?’ - she gulped, nodded and told me that, when she’d decided to see it, she’d just liked the poster and hadn’t realised it was "a foreign film"...
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
