IN HONOUR OF ST VALENTINE’S DAY, THE IRISH FILM ARCHIVE WILL SCREEN NORA (2000), A POWERFUL LOVE STORY AND WINNER OF FILM IRELAND’S RECENT POLL FOR ‘SEXIEST IRISH FILM EVER’.As in her earlier feature Anne Devlin (1994), Pat Murphy again reclaims an important Irish woman from relative obscurity as she tells the tale of Nora (Susan Lynch), a spirited young house-maid from Galway, and her relationship with raffish young writer James Joyce (Ewan MacGregor). Joyce is tormented by the fear that his work will never be published and increasingly obsessed with suspicions of Nora’s infidelity but the couple’s relationship is bonded by a deep, sexual love and by Nora’s practical wisdom and common sense.
As Ruth Barton wrote in Film Ireland Nora’s knowledge of what she wants from the somewhat effete Joyce takes us to a place in the bedroom that other Irish films fear to enter.