Top Issue 1-2024

27 August 1998 Edition

Resize: A A A Print

Cinema: The Nephew

Family matters



Eugene Brady's The Nephew is a moving, engaging, and even sporadically funny drama, featuring a strong, mainly Irish cast.

Donal McCann stars as Tony Egan, a reserved and gruff islander, whose troubled relationship with his sister is rekindled, along with other half-buried secrets from the past, when she dies in America and her only son travels across from New York City to meet his sole relation. The fact that the lad, played sensitively by Hill Harper, is black causes an initial stir. The movie, however, is not concerned with racial issues but with those of family and the heart.

The plot starts to thicken when Harper falls for the one girl on the island guaranteed to cause problems, Aislin Brady (Aislin McGuckin), the daughter of Egan's bitter enemy, Joe Brady (Pierce Brosnan). There are top-notch supporting performances from Sinead Cusack, Niall Toibin, Lorraine Pilkington, and a wonderfully witty Phelim Drew, as more secrets are unearthed and Egan looks destined to repeat his mistakes by alienating his nephew, just as he had forced his sister to emigrate all those years ago. This one is well worth the few bob.

BY MARTIN SPAIN

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland