Exposure is a courageous assault on the smothering cultural conservatism prevalent in Ireland in the 1980s. Three ordinance surveyors – married men Dan (T.P. McKenna) and Eugene (Bosco Hogan) and single man Oliver (Niall O’Brien) – are stationed at a remote West of Ireland hotel on a work assignment. Spending the weekend drinking and untethered from domestic obligation, the trio’s seeming equilibrium is shaken by the arrival of enigmatic French divorcée Caroline (Catherine Schell), a photographer, whose presence exposes the men’s often immature, stunted attitudes towards women and adult relationships.

Writer Philip Davison will be joined by IFI French Film Festival curator, Marie-Pierre Richard, to consider the European sensibility of Kieran Hickey’s work and the exploration for the first time in Irish cinema of sexuality, infidelity, and middle-class angst.

See also IFI French Film Festival.

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn