Dancing At Lughnasa (1998)

"...Highest rating! Intimate and bittersweet! Meryl Streep is magnificent.  Jeff Craig, Sixty-Second Preview
"Enjoy the company of five tremendous actresses.  Jami Bernard, The New York Daily News

Editor's Note A young boy tells the story of growing up in a fatherless home with his unmarried mother and four spinster aunts in 1930's Ireland. Their lives are interrupted by the arrival of two men - the boy's long-lost father, who is off to Spain to fight the war against Franco, and an elderly uncle who has "come home to die" after a lifetime in America. Although life goes on as before for the boy and five sisters, something will happen that will destroy their peaceful existence as they once knew it.

	Brid Brennan
	Catherine McCormack
	Darrel Johnston
	Kathy Burke
	Meryl Streep
	Michael Gambon
	Rhys Ifans
	Sophie Thompson
	Brian Friel - Based on Original Stageplay By
	Pat O'Connor - Director
	Sharon Harel - Executive Producer
	Jane Barclay - Executive Producer
	Noel Pearson - Producer
	Frank McGuiness - Screenplay

Rolling Stone
"...Extraordinary....A luminous cast reveals long-buried feelings..." 11/26/1998 p.132

Sight and Sound
"...[Streep is] remarkable..." 12/01/1998 p.42

New York Times
"...[Streep acts] with supreme, heartbreaking economy and without a trace of showiness....A soaringly scenic film..." 11/13/1998 p.E1

Box Office
"...[McCormack] gives a supple performance that touches on the hidden eroticism of the material..." 11/01/1998 p.136

Los Angeles Times
"...Quietly thoughtful....The film's greatest strength is its superb ensemble cast....[Streep] is convincingly sympathetic..." 11/20/1998 p.C14

Newsweek 0 of 10
Streep is splendid. Here she's one of five superb actresses who should win the first Oscar for ensemble acting. In a climactic scene, the five sisters break out into a wild spontaneous dance. The scene, both heartbreaking and jubilant, has more power than any showstopper in a $75-million musical. - Jack Kroll

New York Times 0 of 10
Meryl Streep has made many a grand acting gesture in her career, but the way she simply peers out a window in Dancing at Lughnasa ranks with the best. Everything the viewer need know about Kate Mundy, the woman she plays here, is written on that prim, lonely face and its flabbergasted gaze. Ms. Streep, who between this film and her performance as a dying mother in One True Thing has had a banner year, conveys all this with supreme, heartbreaking economy and without a trace of showiness. Like much about the film and its characters, she presents a small, effortless epiphany simply by standing still, immersed in the spirit of a lost time and place. Set in Donegal in 1936 and made poignant by the hindsight of narration, Dancing at Lughnasa preserves the author's memories of a world about to change irrevocably, filled with hints of foreboding that made it so powerful an experience on stage. On film, as directed handsomely by Pat O'Connor, it makes for a soaringly scenic film, yet a slightly more diffuse, less haunted drama... Brid Brennan beautifully repeats her Tony-winning performance as Agnes, the reticent, hard-working sister at the center of the family; Sophie Thompson (sister of Emma) makes herself touchingly headstrong and vulnerable as Rose, the sister who is nearly as innocently unpredictable as Jack. There's a fine, hearty turn from Kathy Burke as Maggie, the house wit and realist, while Ms. McCormack conveys youthful yearning for a world beyond small-town values and a sweet, lonely, tiny cottage in the countryside. Ms. Streep's Kate remains the most stubborn and formidable of the bunch, bringing something especially universal to this story of how sisterly wills collide. The time, the place and the rousing Irish music (by Bill Whelan, who did Riverdance) may be most specific, but there's something timeless in Friel's sense of women living at cross-purposes in very close company and feeling the tug of change on even the most closely knit of family ties. As he did in Circle of Friends, O'Connor (directing Frank McGuinness' adaptation of the play, with lovely cinematography by Kenneth MacMillan) creates a quintessentially Irish experience, reveling in the romance and beauty of his story's setting. Whatever the material loses in claustrophobic tension and foreboding, it benefits immeasurably from the glorious, untamed vistas and the quaint ambiance of the little Irish village seen here. It's a place that actually happened to be named Hollywood. - Janet Maslin

HBO 0 of 10
...[A] sensible adaptation by Pat O'Connor of Brian Friel's hit play Dancing At Lughnasa. A restrained Streep underplays beautifully and never dominates the proceedings. The ensemble is the thing in Lughnasa. Streep appears as prim schoolteacher Kate, one of five middle-aged (and unmarried) Mundy sisters... Theatergoers have said that the drama had more emotional immediacy on stage, but the scene in which the five big-screen Mundys join hands and Riverdance out the front door is exhilarating indeed. - Jim Byerley