Baltimore

Imogen Poots shines as Rose Dugdale, the English aristocrat-turned-IRA activist.

Imogen Poots

Partners in life and in art Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy have been making films together for twenty years and for the most part the credits for directing, writing and editing have been shared between them. For me it was their fourth feature, 2019’s Rose Plays Julie, which showed just how brilliant their work could be. Since then, they have given us a decidedly off-beat documentary, The Future Tense (2022), which featured Molloy and Lawlor themselves and in which a projected film about the IRA activist Rose Dugdale was discussed. Now that film is here under the rather improbable title of Baltimore. This turns out to refer not to the American city in Maryland but to the site of an IRA safe house used by Dugdale’s colleagues following a heist of valuable paintings from the home of Sir Alfred Beit carried out on 26th April 1974.

The fact that Rose Dugdale herself has died just days ahead of the film’s UK release is a strange coincidence and may encourage comparisons between what is shown in the film and what is said about Dugdale in newspaper obituaries. But that is not necessarily to the point even if it does bring out the fact that Baltimore fails to tackle the fact that her terrorist activities led to the deaths of many innocent civilians for which she never expressed any remorse. As it happens, if considered as a biopic Baltimore is an unconventional one. In part that's because, despite incorporating flashbacks, it chooses to focus essentially on the theft in 1974 and what happened in the days immediately thereafter when Dugdale was in hiding with the paintings in her possession in a cottage that she had rented in a seaside village. She sent telephone messages threatening to destroy them unless a deal was accepted by which these major art works would be returned if two IRA members imprisoned in London for car bombings were released. But, specific as these details are, even more striking is the sense that, whatever Molloy and Lawlor may have intended, they are utilising incidents from the life of Rose Dugdale less as a personal biographical study than as a means of inviting us to understand how an English upper-class heiress could embrace Marxist beliefs and rebel as she did against her inherited background.

When considered in that light Baltimore still falls well short of the standard set by Rose Plays Julie but this new work from Molloy and Lawlor nevertheless impresses for much of its length. It is aided by the quality of the acting. Imogen Poots plays Rose Dugdale and is on top form throughout. Other leading roles go to Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Lewis Brophy and Jack Meade as the men carrying out the robbery to Rose's orders. Meade is Eddie Gallagher who was also Rose's lover at the time but more screen time goes to the other two who in real life were never identified. Here they are called Dominic and Martin, the former being the older and more experienced (that’s the role taken by the ever-reliable Vaughan-Lawlor). Lewis Brophy is Martin who is portrayed as immature and with a violent uncontrolled streak. Another actor who has the opportunity to impress is Dermot Crowley in the role of a neighbour in the village who is initially friendly but then comes to have suspicions as to the true identity of the woman who has rented his daughter’s cottage. At this stage Rose, who is armed, plans to kill this neighbour should it appear that his suspicions might actually endanger her. Even so, the film’s Rose is always keen to avoid personal acts of violence as much as possible.

There is also another level on which Baltimore attracts and that lies in the novel approach to the material which is set up from the very first shot. The film opens with the heist already in progress and with Rose lying on the floor after being stabbed in the hand. Against this dramatic shot we have an off-screen narrative by Rose herself commenting on what was going through her mind at that moment. This is, of course, less extreme than the famous opening of Sunset Boulevard in which we are looking at the actual corpse of the leading character played by William Holden while in voice-over he starts to tell the story that led to his death. Nevertheless, this opening distinctly establishes the fact that Baltimore is a stylised work. What it wants to tell us about its central character and her history will emerge freely not in chronological order but with clearly labelled flashbacks incorporated at intervals along with images depicting various stages in the heist that continue to be spread out in segments throughout the greater part of the film. That opening gambit has set a tone which allows for this approach to work well and, if despite that there could still be a danger of it all becoming too bitty, everything is splendidly unified by a first-class music score by Stephen McKeon, a composer who works regularly with Lawlor and Molloy.

The style that has been so cleverly set up can be described as resulting in a film which is a mosaic but there is nevertheless a limit to what works well in this mode. Sadly, that becomes evident in the film’s later scenes. There is an understandable degree of invention in this treatment of a true story but the writing starts to lose conviction in the confrontation between Rose and her neighbour and also in the depiction of its immediate consequences: there is a touch of melodrama and a certain lack of conviction here. Even more fatally there is extra stylisation in a subsequent dream sequence and an ending which by incorporating footage fantasized by Rose feels absurd even if the final image of all is a haunting one. But, while these late scenes disappoint, much in the film fascinates and as an account of how a woman from a very specific background can be transformed and emerge as somebody unrecognisable to her parents it is wholly persuasive. Baltimore may not fully get to grips with the real Rose Dugdale but it makes us believe in the woman inspired by her and brought to life by Imogen Poots.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Imogen Poots, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Lewis Brophy, Jack Meade, Dermot Crowley, Andrea Irvine, John Kavanagh, Carrie Crowley, Simon Coury, Flynn Gray, Patrick Martins, Vanessa Ifediora.

Dir Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, Pro David Collins and Joe Lawlor, Screenplay Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, Ph Tom Comerford, Pro Des John Hand, Ed Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, Music Stephen McKeon, Costumes Maeve Paterson.

Desperate Optimists/Samson Films/Screen Ireland/Bankside Films/BCP-Icon.
98 mins. Ireland/UK. 2023. US Rel: 1 March 2024. UK Rel: 22 March 2024. Cert. 15.