FILM REVIEWS:
BLUE ROAD: THE EDNA O’BRIEN STORY (Ireland/UK 2024) **
Directed by Sinead O’Shea
In 1960, a young Irish woman named Edna O’Brien wrote a sexually frank debut novel, The Country Girls. She became a literary sensation, writing for The New Yorker, delivering provocative interviews, and authoring screenplays.
Her success enraged her writer husband and made her a pariah in her native Ireland, where herbooks were banned. She would make her home in London, where she conducted numerous love affairs, hosted star-studded parties, and made and lost a fortune.
In July 2024, Edna passed away, and this film provides a final testimony from her, aged 93, as she reflects upon her extraordinary life for filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea’s camera.
Granting the director access to her personal journals — read aloud in the film by the Oscar-winning Irish actress Jessie Buckley (HAMNET) — and offering additional perspectives from Gabriel Byrne, Walter Mosley, and an array of renowned writers, Edna does not shy away from any subject.
Blue Road is as candid, dark, and enchanting as O’Brien’s wonderful novels.
One of the best biopics to be seen, BLUE ROAD: THE EDNA O’BRIEN STORY, tells the story from childhood to death of Irish writer Edna O’Brien with candid interviews right up to her death at the age of 94 in 2024. Filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea taps into a wealth of material, including unpublished diaries, decades of television appearances, and new interviews with O’Brien, in her 90s and as incisive as ever. There are interviews with her sons, Carlo and Sasha, about their unconventional upbringing with a divorced mother whose house guests included Marlon Brando, Judy Garland, and Paul McCartney. The Irish actor Gabriel Byrne explains how O’Brien broke taboos, while writer Walter Mosely describes how she changed his life as his teacher. Her reflections on her life and what she has learned are most moving. She says in her final interview that she wishes to be buried when she dies. A remarkable, candid and riveting portrait of the life of the Irish writer given the highest honour of ‘wise one’ in Irish Literature.
BLUE ROAD: THE EDNA O’BRIEN STORY premiered at TIFF in September 2024 and finally opens in theatres on April 20th.
Trailer:
