Review by Bud Moore
Stars 70 Irish women
Written by Ken Wardrop
Produced by Andrew Freedman & Alan Maher
Cinematography by Kate McCullough
Certification UK U
Runtime 80 minutes
Directed by Ken Wardrop
While not being without some charm, His and Hers is a somewhat flawed attempt to tell a large story in an intimate way. Following the life of one typical Irish woman through the voices, life experiences, and reflections of 70 females between the ages of nought and 90. The similarity of experience that is focussed through the women's address to the camera is both the films greatest strength and biggest flaw.
All of the women are pictured in their own domestic interior, and as they age the setting around them changes, large contemporary houses almost devoid of personality are, replaced by cosier surroundings, nick nacks and decorative ceramics adorn the walls, speaking to us of a life lived in tiny increments. A 1st date, a kiss, a memorable evening, a proposal, a pregnancy scare, a celebratory meal, these are the anecdotes and small stories that layer together to form the narrative.
Of course, some of these stories are not small. The body shock and emotional roller coaster of pregnancy and child birth are fundamental events in these women's lives, but also very ordinary and common place. Which is one of the problems with His and Hers. Once the women become mothers they seem to run out of stories that are about themselves, there is far more reference to 'His', the fathers and the sons than to 'Hers' the women’s own aspirations and dreams. While the film accurately reflects the cycle of one persons life, giving each anecdote and event an equal weight in the narrative means that three quarters of the way through the film really begins to drag. We know the ending, which is a beautiful, really affecting speech to camera set in a care home, but that only goes to emphasise how mundane a lot of the events leading up to the final reflection before death have been.
His & Hers catches Ireland and the Irish at a strange moment, with the economy in trouble, and the political establishment seeming to be the cause of the problem, some of the solutions from the last 10-15 years now seem problematic. His and Hers sets in aspic a lot of the ways of being for Irish women during the 20th century. The 1st people we see the babies and the preschool girls are the ones that will take the story of the relationship between His and Hers forward, but they are as yet unformed and react to the simple personal questions they've been posed in a direct and charming way. While the women we see towards the end, although they have a lifetime of experience fade in to the distance like a phantom. Although true to thousands of years of human experience, it somehow left me with the feeling that something was unresolved, which may be the point.