Bal­ti­more review – chill­ing and expert­ly constructed

Rose Dug­dale is a mar­gin­al but fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure in the sto­ry of The Trou­bles. She plant­ed her red flag in the annals of his­to­ry by pulling off the biggest art heist of all time, organ­ised with a view to syphon­ing the funds made from reselling a stash of paint­ings to help repa­tri­ate a group of incar­cer­at­ed IRA members.

The film­mak­ing duo Joe Lawlor and Chris­tine Mol­loy have an abid­ing inter­est in dis­guis­es, alter-egos and the idea of peo­ple trans­mut­ing into dif­fer­ent ver­sions of them­selves. Bal­ti­more offers rich ter­rain on which these con­cepts can thrive, not least in the idea that Dug­dale was born a British blue­blood who, through a series of rev­e­la­tions and the fast-track­ing of a rad­i­cal polit­i­cal con­scious­ness, decou­pled from a life of obscene wealth and rit­u­al and became an out­spo­ken war­rior for class and gen­der-based injustices.

As essayed by the great Imo­gen Poots, Dug­dale is pre­sent­ed as a per­son of almost cut-glass seri­ous­ness, where every tac­i­turn aspect of her being is ded­i­cat­ed to serv­ing the polit­i­cal cause at hand. The only respite we get from this cold­ly-obses­sive nature is via a series of mono­logues she deliv­ers to her unborn child, all of which are heart­break­ing­ly coloured by the fact that she may very well be dead or in prison by the times this lit­tle per­son makes its way out into the world.

The film opens on the heist itself, with Dug­dale and a group of male accom­plices descend­ing upon the grand Geor­gian stack of Russ­bor­ough House in Coun­ty Wick­low to ter­rorise its res­i­dents and nab a few pieces by some old mas­ters. Rose’s MO is to use threat rather than vio­lence, though the recep­tion they receive by the enti­tled, dyed-in-the-wool aris­tos who live in the build­ing ensures that a lit­tle bit of blood is spilled. Lat­er, we move to the dinky get­away cot­tage where Rose et al hole up to make their nego­ti­a­tions, and it’s there where the recrim­i­na­tions and para­noia begin to fester.

The weight of Dugdale’s moral quandary is empha­sised through a sound­track con­sist­ing of eerie orches­tral stabs – in fact, there’s no-one in the world who’s using the tim­pani in a more expres­sive and chill­ing fash­ion than Lawlor and Mol­loy. The sto­ry is cap­tured, too, with a glassy pre­ci­sion which negates any ele­ment of sen­sa­tion­al­ism. The whole episode is pre­sent­ed as some­what bleak and sti­fling, and it’s only until very late in the film that we see some phys­i­cal sug­ges­tions that the net is clos­ing in on Rose.

It’s a chill­ing and expert­ly con­struct­ed work which goes on to sug­gest that our finicky anx­i­eties will end up get­ting the best for us. Poots brings fire to her role with­out just splay­ing it all on the screen, and she ensures that there’s a hair-trig­ger inten­si­ty to every one of her two-han­der con­ver­sa­tions through­out the film. It’s also a film about the messi­ness of life and the inher­ent unpre­dictabil­i­ty of peo­ple, where the idea of crisp, clean action devoid of emo­tion­al con­nec­tion is sim­ply impos­si­ble to achieve.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.