The Arbor | Little White Lies

The Arbor

22 Oct 2010 / Released: 22 Oct 2010

Young woman with red hair wearing a pale blue jacket, sitting on a patterned sofa outdoors.
Young woman with red hair wearing a pale blue jacket, sitting on a patterned sofa outdoors.
A deeply res­o­nant piece of film­mak­ing that leaves you sure of one thing – there’s always more than one truth.

Clio Barnard’s dis­sec­tion of the life and lega­cy of play­wright Andrea Dun­bar is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at work­ing-class Britain and the effects of grow­ing up on a grit­ty Brad­ford estate. But more than that, it’s a stun­ning med­i­ta­tion on the sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of memory.

Dunbar’s chil­dren – now in their twen­ties – recall their past in voiceover as actors lip sync their lines, with her two daugh­ters tak­ing cen­tre stage with mutu­al­ly sym­pa­thet­ic yet dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent accounts of their upbring­ing. The fact that they nev­er appear on screen allows them to talk can­did­ly, while Barnard is giv­en the artis­tic free­dom for some stun­ning visu­al interpretations.

Fact and fic­tion merge once more with re-enact­ments of Dunbar’s play The Arbor on the estate that inspired it, along­side archive footage of the artist. This is a deeply res­o­nant piece of film­mak­ing that leaves you sure of one thing – there’s always more than one truth.

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