LFF Review: ‘Wildfire’
Cathy Brady’s latest film, Wildfire, is a complex story of a relationship between two sisters, which has too many cracks for an easy fix. After abandoning her quiet border town in Northern Ireland a year before, Kelly (Nika McGuigan) suddenly returns, showing up on the doorstep of her sister, Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone). These Irish sisters’ share a deep rooted bond despite their differences: Kelly, being the more reckless, makes Lauren’s married life and factory job look like conformity to society. Kelly’s return, however, quickly stirs up long-repressed traumas between the sisters, and in their community, that threaten this wave of stability. Lauren must now choose between the life she has built on her own, or to follow along with her sister and her ambitions.
The immense history of British colonialism hangs as a burden over the film’s earlier scenes. Kelly crosses the border next to a sign welcoming people to Northern Ireland, but someone has spray-painted “One” over the “Northern.” In a complete contrast, she walks down the street, seeing a building plastered with a giant motto: “Prepared for Peace. Ready for War.” However these wider issues impact the more personal feelings of trauma when Kelly heads to the home of her sister, Lauren who has struggled to deal with Kelly’s sudden disappearance, and her return conjures the long-repressed memory of their mother’s death. This is a flash from their past that they both share, and continues to cause them to battle against each other.
As the film’s focus quickly drifts away from its more political backdrop and flashbacks, it begins to travel toward the deeper feelings that McGuigan and Noone bring up as they explore their characters’ almost broken relationship. McGuigan beautifully emphasizes Kelly’s wild, free-spirit, as if she had inherited it from her mother, and Lauren, despite her husband and work colleagues’ constant mockery of her sister, shuts down any negative gossip.
Lauren and Kelly’s tumultuous confrontations with their pasts and each other naturally has reminders in the film’s acknowledgement to Ireland’s unsettling history, which still affects many of its residents to this day. Wildfire essentially refuses to reduce itself to a true meaning, instead living through the unpredictable, fragile arcs of its characters as they attempt to work toward an understanding of themselves and each other.
Lauren’s feeling of stability starts to tear apart from the moment she sees her sister, as she simultaneously unleashes her fury at her and anyone who attempts to speak ill of her. They both relish in this abrupt response to trauma, though neither approach truly confronts the underlying tragedies that shaped them. You can feel their frustrations as they are unable to move on from their pasts without each other, almost to help balance the emotions they are feeling.
Through Wildfire, Brady suggests that fixing our own personal issues and improving ourselves can contribute to improving our own political future. This is explicitly portrayed through Lauren and Kelly’s complicated, traumatic childhoods, which, by the end of the film, they have come to begrudgingly accept as a part of themselves, although it will take years for them to truly mend their broken pieces. – Charlotte
‘Wildfire’ screened at the 2020 London Film Festival.