Clodagh is an absorbing short film by Portia A. Buckley. Stands out include the poignant narrative and nuanced performances, particularly from the magnificent Bríd Ní Neachtain. Clodagh is a short film that deserves your time.
Mrs Kelly (Bríd Ní Neachtain) is a devout and rigorously honest housekeeper who discovers a young Irish girl, Clodagh (Katelyn Rose Downey), with an exceptional gift for step-dancing. This meeting creates a moral conundrum for Mrs. Kelly, as she contemplates whether to nurture Clodagh’s talent or adhere to the strict societal norms.
Portia A. Buckley’s Clodagh is a film filled with nuance. We see these blink, and you’ll miss it emotive moments throughout the film that subconsciously grabs your attention. Be it when Clodagh’s father’s desperate exasperation as he throws his Hail Mary of a plea to Mrs Kelly to take young Clodagh into Kelly’s step-dancing school. Or when Mrs Kelly immediately knows where Clodagh lives and the consequences of that, leaving both upset. It’s a film that allows these multitudes of small moments to build up on you as a viewer, and its result is a marvellously well-made short film.
Bríd Ní Neachtain is superb here as the constrained Mrs Kelly, a woman raised to go by the book, never steps out of line and indeed never dances on it. She is able to bring so much heart and internal conflict to her character that it becomes so easy to be enthralled by her. At first, you would be forgiven for believing that Mrs Kelly is one of those stereotypical uptight women who like everything to be a certain way. But there is a softness present that is full of kindness. She can’t help but want to take Clodagh in for that one lesson because of her father. She is patient and calm with Clodagh and happy to go ahead and change the speed of the dance with the help of Mr Hickey (played by the entertaining Jim Kitson). There is a warmth there that draws you to the character, so when she does have that inevitable conundrum, you feel for her and can see exactly why she would sway on either side of her decision. That is down to the script and just how magnificent Neachtain is in the role.
Katelyn Rose Downey is just as good as the young titular character Clodagh. There is a downbeat shyness to the character that fills you with sorrow. She is someone who is not having the best time of it in life. Yet, she has that one positive outlet: her step-dancing. She becomes a whole new person when she dances, and that sadness dissipates to someone who feels like they have finally found her people to lift her from the gloom. Downey holds her own with Neachtain in the form sign-up scene, and both of their performances pain you as you see how the possible result will hurt them both, for different reasons.
There are so many strengths in Clodagh, from the performances to the narrative itself, that hold more than one thread. Mrs Kelly was raised in the strictest of upbringings that curtailed her aspirations. She is a woman full of regret that she never got to live the life she feels she could have. But Mrs Kelly is making the best of it by being an important community member. Other than her faith, her passion is dance. So, when Clodagh comes into her life, it almost flips everything she knows.
The use of faith in Clodagh is exemplarily thought out in the script from Buckley and co-writer Michael Lindley. It serves as a guiding principle for Mrs. Kelly, shaping her decisions and moral dilemmas. This could have easily been a story about Mrs Kelly’s conundrum with her love of dance and her commitment to religion, but it is something far more profound than that. To give us such depth to the characters and their predicaments is genuinely fantastic.
Clodagh will be playing in the Shorts: Pride, No Prejudice program from Saturday June 8th – Sunday June 16th. Tickets and times are available here.
★★★★
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