Film Reviews

His and Hers

• Rating:
• Director: Ken Wardrop
• Starring:
• Details: Ireland / 80mins (G).

There's definitely something in the water. Irish films may be hit and miss, but when it comes to documentaries this country is having no problems whatsoever. His And Hers can slip in beside recent favourites like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Saviours, Waveriders and The Yellow Bittern with ease.
"A man loves his girlfriend the most, his wife the best and his mother the longest," is the quote that opens Ken Wardrop's film that documents the many stages of a woman's life - participants range from one-year-olds to ninety-year-olds - and how they relate to the men in their lives. Wardrop begins proceedings with toddlers and how they feel about their daddies before letting loose the teens and their frustrated attempts at their father's driving lessons. They discuss everything from washing and cooking dinners to love, proposals, pregnancies and the death of their loved ones. As the interviewees get older, the tone changes: the fun and games stop, as His And Hers becomes a bittersweet, melancholic and moving.
Wardrop's documentary is so simple it's almost perfect. It might kick off like School Around The Corner with interviews with toddlers and little girls, but His And Hers matures and flowers into something so touching and sweet (while one shy teenage girl is being interviewed, she receives an anonymous text asking her to the disco - her face just lights up). There's a gentle progression to the documentary. The interviews, which are breathlessly short, bleed perfectly into the next: one talking head would mention her boyfriend and where their relationship is going, the next interviewee talks about her live-in boyfriend, then one will talk about her engagement, the next her upcoming wedding, the next her impending motherhood and so on. The style mirrors Wardrop's direction, as his bridging shots are usually half in/half out of a room. The documentary is always on the move; one foot may be in the past put the other is making determined strides to the future.
It's when Wardrop turns his camera on his elderly women that his documentary begins to carry weight. Old, teary-eyed women, who lost their husbands years before or just recently, explain how much they miss them. It's heartbreaking stuff. The beauty of His And Hers is that everyone can see their daughter, sister, girlfriend, wife, mother and grandmother in the women that ghost past Wardrop's lens. Lovely.

Review by Gavin Burke