MUST SEE –
Nov. 21, 2023 – In her extraordinary debut feature, Irish artist and filmmaker Myrid Carten fixes her camera, when possible, on her erratic, alcoholic mother Nuala —On a busy Belfast shopping street, in broad daylight, the filmmaker observes a woman slumped on a sidewalk bench, her head hidden in a gray hoody, her right hand clasping a bottle of red wine.
Pedestrians walk past, either ignoring the hunched figure or casting her a fleeting glance of concern before carrying on with their day. Carten keeps her camera on her, in transfixed recognition — for the woman is her mother Nuala, identifiable to her daughter only by the high-heeled boots on her unsteady feet. No approach is made, no greeting shouted, no gaze returned. Later, Carten admits to feeling guilt at filming her mother as though she were a stranger, before walking away. But as her raw, searing documentary “A Want in Her” eventually makes clear, theirs is a relationship defined by safe and unsafe distances. Absence, if it doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, sometimes keeps it intact.
