Portia A. Buckley’s beautifully performed and directed tale of a woman at a crossroads in her beliefs of what is right and wrong is only further enhanced by the truly sublime cinematography of Jomo Fray. Clodagh is showing at the Tribeca Film Festival from June 8 – 16. BOOK TICKETS
No one is 100% sure where the saying “Rules are meant to be broken” came from; it has been attributed to many over the years and continues to be used in our daily conversations. But what does it really mean? There are rules designed to protect us and others from harm, including religious rules based on ancient scrolls, club rules, and school rules, as well as the self-created rules by which we choose to live our lives.
Sometimes, our self-created rules are based on a lifetime of regrets we can’t move beyond, while others centre on a fixed moral compass we can’t and won’t adjust due to our faith or beliefs. But sometimes, our self-created rules were made to be broken, especially when they directly affect the opportunities available to someone who happens to have entered our sphere.
Writer and director Portia A. Buckley and writer and producer Michael Lindley’s beautiful and poignant drama Clodagh explores how a life of fixed rules can directly influence the opportunity and potential of someone else.
Mrs Kelly (Bríd Ní Neachtain) is the housekeeper and gatekeeper for a priest in a small town in Waterford, near the County Cork border; she is calm, quiet and full of care in her duties from scrubbing baths to polishing shoes and meticulously vacuuming the church. It is a monastic life with a fair degree of loneliness as she keeps her emotions in and maintains order at all costs. Her faith is strong and central to everything she does, and her beliefs come with a set of rules she has lived by her entire life. Aided by the violin of Mr Hickey (Jim Kitson), Mrs Kelly also runs the local Waterford branch of a girls’ Irish dancing school that uses the church rooms.
It’s a day like any other when a man and his daughter approach Mrs Kelly before her class, and the man asks if his daughter, Clodagh (Katelyn Rose Downey), can join in. However, as with everything in Mrs Kelly’s life, rules must be followed, and a new child can’t just turn up. But Mrs Kelly bends this minor rule despite her misgivings, and when Clodagh dances, she is glad she did. Standing before her is a dancing prodigy who makes her believe in dance again.
As she signs Clodagh up to the dance class with a glint of excitement, she discovers that Clodagh lives just over the border in County Cork, meaning she must attend the County Cork dance classes. For Mrs Kelly, this rule is set in stone and cannot be broken, even if Clodagh wants to dance with her club. But some rules are meant to be broken, right?
Portia A. Buckley’s beautifully performed and directed tale of a woman at a crossroads in her beliefs of what is right and wrong is only further enhanced by the truly sublime cinematography of Jomo Fray. As art and talent collide with faith and a set of unbending self-constructed rules, this tender sixteen-minute story earns a place in the heart and perfectly demonstrates the sheer power of short films in exploring an ocean of themes in the briefest of runtimes.
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