A Good Woman Is Hard to Find (2019)

Let's get over the marketing title. If you count the characters in the movie, the second part of "A Good Woman Is Hard to Find" fails the statistics (or otherwise said, you'll find one good woman in the movie, one good man seems harder...). Anyway, other interpretations of the title in other contexts might lead to more complicated discussions :). So let's better leave the headline aside, and get into the story...

Sarah Collins is a widow with two children, living somewhere in Northern Ireland. Sarah struggles to find out who killed her husband, murdered in a nearby park a few months before the movie starts. The police seems to ignore her desperate requests to press on with the inquiry. Add to that the lack of money, one of the children traumatized by the loss of his father, and an unfriendly environment, where even the local shops employees are hostile. We have, therefore, a context where getting through the day requires being tough. Much more than Sarah's softness, who's barely able to counter the nagging of her own mother. On top of everything, one day she's assaulted by some low-life dealer who's forcing his way into her house and decides he'll hide his stolen drugs there. Physically threatened by the guy, mocked by the police, and scared by the perspective of losing the custody of her children, Sarah gives in and becomes an involuntary accomplice. And things get worse... until Sarah snaps.

The whole picture I just described is maybe too grey to make you want to see the movie. You can add to that also some pretty gory scenes, and also the trailer which won't offer much. The bad advertising stops here. Ignore all. Trust me, you should see the movie. I didn't expect to have the surprise I had given all the above context.

It's by far the best acting of a female lead I've watched in the last couple of years. Sarah Bolger (the main actress) basically runs the whole show. It's hard for me to find another recent example where the acting + obviously also what's in the script, to make you root for and empathize with the character the way it happens here, even after she's crossing some limits (if the axe in the poster didn't tell much...). Probably the effect is given by the entire sequence of unfortunate events, which the poor woman is forced to endure, sequence that gradually increases the impact the movie has on you.

Despite the gloomy and tensed mood it starts with, the movie lets you breathe. It's relatively well dosed with tension release moments, and except of a couple scenes that force the limits a bit, in general it's not exactly hard to watch, despite of the above description.

For a festival movie, which I don't even know it got distributed in cinemas, clearly with a reduced budget, the production level is ok. Don't expect much, but the editing, the sound, the image and whatever else we have on the technical side, support the story quite well. On the negative side: the ending is maybe a bit anticlimactic (spoiler: no axe :P), but in some way it makes it more believable like that...

Rating: 4 out of 5