Claire Dolan
by Lodge Kerrigan
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Colm Meaney, Katrin Cartlidge, Muriel Maida, Patrick Husted, Vincent D'OnofrioDirector: Lodge Kerrigan
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; French (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-21
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker Video
Movie Reviews of Claire Dolan
Movie Review: FILM IS FULL OF ATMOSPHERE
Summary: 3 Stars
The tag for this movie could easily be - people suck so don't bother trying to form a relationship with anyone. I can appreciate what the director was trying to do, a dark and stark look at human relationships, but this film is chock full of atmosphere and little else. We watch as Claire Dolan says and does whatever a man wants in order to have sex with them. She needs the money to pay off a debt she owes to this older man. We watch as her mother dies in a nursing home and Claire makes sure they do not notify the older man who has been footing the bill. This "friend" of her parents has been forcing her to prostitute herself to pay off a debt incurred by her mother's care? Scenes between these two characters are tense and the screen vibrates with violent emotions.
Claire gets the heck out of Dodge and runs away, hoping to escape and reconnect with extended family. Claire exists as salon worker and tries to form a relationship with another desperate person. Odd things start to happen and we are not surprised by the reappearance of the older man. He has tracked her down. This time we see the heartless violence of this man as he orders her back to work.
I cringed when Claire tries to forge emotional bonds with other people. When Claire opens about her mother's death to a stranger who happened to smile at her is heartbreaking. The sexual encouters are cold or cruel. Especailly the instance where a man professes to be just as repelled as her by the situation but uses her all the same. Claire's lover easily moves on with his life, remarried and getting another woman pregnant. This film is bleak and shows the utter isolation of mankind despite any attempts to the contrary. Claire Dolan is one messed up woman and her solution of having a child so she too could experience love is a diaster just waiting to repeat itself.
I can certainly appreciate the director's view but I cannot forgive the huge mess left at the end. Why was this old man intent on ruining Claire's life? There is a vague reference to "knowing" her since age 12 but nothing is ever defined about their relationship. The whole plot hinged on this odd relationship but it was never explained. There is also the whole "Claire" and "Lucy" identity issue. Claire used the name "Lucy" when working but the lover discovered two seperate identification cards with seemingly different women in the photos. Are they the same person or does she have a sister? We do see a woman walk down the street that has the lover staring hard. Is it the woman from the Lucy I.D.? This is left up to the viewer to decide. This movie ultimately left me frustrated by all the questions thrown out there but maybe that was the point? Life rarely provides answers.....
Summary of Claire Dolan
Electrifying indie auteur Lodge Kerrigan, following up his cult ordeal Clean, Shaven, explores the desolate existence and paranoid perspective of a woman lost in a tangle of high-end prostitution and urban anxiety. Claire Dolan (Katrin Cartlidge, Naked, Breaking the Waves), an Irish immigrant in Manhattan, pays off her debt to a formidable gangster/pimp (Colm Meaney, The Snapper, Layer Cake) by submitting herself, as a call girl, to the whims of anonymous businessmen. Craving an ordinary existence and living in cold dread of losing her sense of self, Claire attempts to bond with a quietly troubled cab driver (Vincent D'Onofrio, Full Metal Jacket, Ed Wood) and remake her life. Both a dramatic exploration of exploitation and a psychological portrait of modern womanhood adrift in a world of violation and rootlessness, and filmed by Kerrigan with a poet's awareness of detail, Claire Dolan stands as one of the 1990s' most significant and affecting works of cinema.A bittersweet film about an Irish immigrant working as a mid-level prostitute in Manhattan, Claire Dolan tells a darkly intriguing story that is less about sex than trying to attain love. Dolan--portrayed with subtle melancholy by Katrin Cartlidge (who died in 2002 from complications of pneumonia and blood poisoning)--is too pragmatic to think she could ever fall in love with one of her clients. They are merely business transactions. What she wants is to have the unconditional love of having her own baby. When she meets a quiet cabbie (Vincent D'Onofrio), it's apparent that despite what they say to each other, their troubled relationship is based on desperation, not love. Director Lodge Kerrigan offers sparing insight into Dolan's past, just enough to make you concerned about her uncertain future. He doesn't try to make the characters understand whether they can accept each other, and he vehemently refuses to reassure his audience that everything will be all right. For moviegoers who have been conditioned by happy Hollywood endings, this can be a little unsettling. But that uncertainty--as in real life--is part of the beauty of this understated drama. --Jae-Ha Kim
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