Irish Film Institute -International Film Directory – Film Listing

The Last September

    • Director

      Deborah Warner

    • Credits

      Producer: Yvonne Thunder. Writer: Elizabeth Bowen, John Banville

    • Principal Cast

      Keeley Hawes, Michael Gambon, David Tennant, Maggie Smith, Fiona Shaw

  • Category

    Feature
    Literature

Much celebrated theatrical director Deborah Warner made the transition to feature film here with this lushly-filmed adaptation of Elizabeth Bowen’s novel of the same name, in a depiction of love blooming amidst social collapse. Set during the Irish War of Independence in the 1920s, The Last September concerns itself with Lois (Keeley Hawes), a young Anglo-Irish girl whose rebellious spirit causes her to reject respectable British soldier Gerald’s (David Tennant) love for her. Instead it is Peter, an IRA soldier sheltering in the grounds of her home, who wins her attraction; the impossibility of such a romance at a time when the IRA where driving the Anglo-Irish out of their homes, however, escapes Lois. The film’s wealth of talent – Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, and Fiona Shaw all appear as members of the Anglo-Irish – helps bring alive the poetry of a work by one of Ireland’s finest twentieth century novelists.

103 minutes, Ireland/UK/France, 1999, Colour

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