A Want in Her review daughter's searing portrait of family addiction and mental illness

"Film-maker Myrid Carten, who holds the camera much of the time as well as directing, exposes here the open wound that is her relationship with her mother Nuala, who has both bipolar disorder and alcoholism. Nuala often goes missing on binges, and as the film opens we hear Myrid telling someone on the phone how she just spotted her mother on a Belfast street in a total state, but recognisable because of the glamorous high-heeled shoes she was wearing."

"You'd struggle to realise this is the same woman we see in news footage from years earlier: soignee, composed and described as a social worker who has written a guidance paper for police on how to handle victims of domestic abuse. The Nuala of the present, when sober, is still articulate, empathic and insightful at times -- it's just that she can't stop herself from hitting the red wine hard."

"Nuala gave Myrid a camcorder when she was a teenager and, a natural archivist as well as instinctive film-maker, she seems to have kept everything. That includes footage of kids in her class, about nine or 10 years old at the time, acting out little dramas of drunken adults rowing with their spouses. Later we see footage of teenage Myrid and another girl (her sister?) acting out a psychodrama cribbed from the antics of Nuala and other family members."

Myrid Carten films her fraught relationship with her mother Nuala, who struggles with bipolar disorder and alcoholism and periodically disappears on binges. Archival news footage presents a previously composed, professional Nuala described as a social worker who advised police on domestic-abuse victims. When sober Nuala can be articulate and empathic, but addiction undermines her stability and affects other family members. Myrid, given a camcorder as a teenager, preserved home footage that reenacts family drinking and conflict. Staged moments, including Nuala playing herself and Myrid lip-syncing recorded speech, interrogate generational patterns of abuse and performance.

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