09/08/2024 - Irish writer-director Aislinn Clarke’s second powerful feature takes us inside the psyche of a tormented character facing up to the horrors of her past

Following the success of her debut feature, The Devil's Doorway, Irish writer-director Aislinn Clarke is once again embracing the obscurity of genre cinema, offering up an incredibly courageous second film which is both gloomy and abnormally bright, and a one-way journey to the darker side of being human. Selected in the Locarno Film Festival’s Out of Competition line-up, Fréwaka [+see also:
trailer
interview: Aislinn Clarke
film profile] is a work which sweeps you away from the very first frame; an unforgiving account of traumas which can’t be overcome or even tamed without facing up to horrors of the past.

Tormented by the death of her mother and a past littered with violence and abuse, care worker Shoo (Clare Monnelly), the film’s protagonist, is invited to a remote village in the Irish countryside to look after an agoraphobic woman called Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) who’s been keeping her neighbours at arm’s length for some time. What she finds even more angst-inducing, however, over and above human contact and open spaces, are sinister entities known as Na Sídhe by whom she believes herself to have been kidnapped decades previously during her wedding reception. Although Peig makes it clear to Shoo from the outset that she doesn’t want her help, over time the two women develop a strangely close bond, as if linked by an invisible thread. Trapped in a village whose inhabitants all seem to have something to hide, and swallowed up by Peig’s house, which doesn’t ever seem to have seen the light of day, Shoo slowly begins to lose touch with reality. Consumed by paranoia which she can no longer control, and by the rituals and superstitions punctuating the elderly woman’s daily life, Shoo is forced in spite of herself to face up to the horrors of her past, and to hidden traumas which are floating perilously back up to the surface.

The title of this film, which is the first horror film shot in the Irish language, comes from the Irish word “fréamhacha”, meaning roots. And it’s the roots of a personal and collective past which take possession of Shoo’s body and mind, like a pair of arms which have superhuman strength despite their decayed and shrivelled appearance. The protagonist tries to escape her childhood memories, but they return to torment her, reminding her that inner wounds – imprinted indelibly on her mind – can never be erased. Enveloped in mysterious and delightfully troubling music courtesy of DieHexen, Fréwaka revisits local folklore and reflects upon traumas passed on from one generation to the next. The film’s strength lies in its ability to subvert and create a bridge between Irish folklore and burning modern topics such as mental health, trauma, anxiety and PTSD.

Fréwaka depicts an extreme experience of disorientation, as if reality were no longer reliable and the protagonist could no longer count on anyone or anything. Unable to protect herself from a past which seems to consume her from within, Shoo appears to be the living embodiment of this vicious circle. The characters populating the film are disoriented, aware of their fragility but unable to face up to a pain which winds its way from the past into the present. The house in which Peig and Shoo are imprisoned becomes a repository for these fears, a metaphor for a domestic space in which women have always been trapped by a patriarchy which has always tried to subjugate and control them. Fréwaka is a film about trauma as a legacy and about the difficulty of sharing a pain which burns inside of us like a will-o’-the-wisp.

Fréwaka was produced by DoubleBand Films (UK) and Wildcard (Ireland), with international sales falling to New Europe Film Sales.

(Translated from Italian)