19/11/2024 - Myrid Carten's debut documentary traces her mother’s battle with addiction through a profound reprocessing of personal archives and piercing conversations

Belfast, a nondescript city bench: visual artist and first-time feature filmmaker Myrid Carten reveals that she’s seen her mother sitting on that bench, “completely drunk”. Recognising her only because of the high heels she wears, Carten has called the missing-persons hotline. These puzzle pieces begin to congeal together in this opening sequence from Carten’s A Want in Her [+see also:
interview: Myrid Carten
film profile], the director’s deeply humanising emotional quarry of a film about her mother’s struggle with addiction and mental health, which just had its world premiere in IDFA’s International Competition. Using a plethora of archival childhood home video and newly captured first-person footage, the Irish filmmaker crafts a moving and collage-like portrait of her relationship with her mother, Nuala Carten, punctuated by moments of unbridled desperation.

In what can only be described as intriguing context, Nuala used to be a social worker dealing with cases of domestic abuse. First through Carten's point of view in a first-person cinematographic style, we witness different phases of her mother’s struggle, and the film touches on her being bipolar, addicted to a variety of substances and drinking up to 18 bottles of cider a day. At times set to ethereal synthesisers and other times evocative strings by Clarice Jensen, sequences unfold most vividly in the home in the present and the past, a place that Carten films from a distorted wide-angle as a dwelling that absorbs the emotions swirling between the two.

With lensing credits shared by Carten, Seán Mullan and Donna Wade, the filmmaker, too, appears as a character in her work – or rather, as “Myrid”, her onscreen persona inextricable from that of Carten but still distinct. A Want in Her supercharges the distance between subject and filmmaker, embedding within it the bizarre foreignness of witnessing someone you know so well in a position of complete vulnerability. Carten also uses the film to interrogate the line that must be drawn by Nuala’s loved ones, as a mother-daughter role reversal in the filmmaker’s life is shown to have already occurred at a young age.

Performance art clips drawn from the filmmaker’s exhibition work (shot on monitors and screens) and staged sequences where Carten directs her mother create further layers in this already very rich film. From the archival footage, a raw childhood playfulness emanates, and seems to ardently mask the difficulties that Carten faced while growing up with her mother — save for a portent video recording of young Myrid and her friends play-acting a scene of domestic violence. So when adult Myrid and her camera first come face-to-face with the filmmaker’s mother as they sit together in a car, it's uncomfortable – almost intrusively close. But just as Nuala starts descending into incoherence and childlike behaviour (“Look at the dogs, like big fluffy ones. Aren’t they nice?”), Carten signals to us that this is neither a sob story nor an indictment. Hitting us with the other side of the coin, the director juxtaposes this interaction with a clip in which Nuala, fresh-faced and well-spoken, is speaking on television about a best-practices manual she wrote as a social worker.

Carten and editor Karen Harley use this dichotomised montage technique to great effect at other points in the film, including the transfixing opening sequence and is then repeated later when Myrid admits to filming her mother (a “street-drinker”) sitting drunkenly hunched over on a Belfast bench. The footage of that very, very difficult moment is then shared with us. But Carten never slips into pity territory, omitting the visuals of more straining moments and leaving us to speculate on the basis of sound only.

The documentary clearly impresses as a debut and could become essential viewing for anyone grappling with the indescribable complexities within a mother-daughter relationship. It’s a remarkably realist work – and not innately a hopeful one – but glimpses of peaks must creep through. Because, at some point, what more can you really do? Fittingly, before the title card appears and the arpeggiated synths ring almost joyously in our ears, young Myrid gently reminds us: “Look up at the sky. It’s as blue as blue can be!”

A Want in Her is an Irish-UK-Dutch production by Inland Films (Ireland), Snowstorm Productions (UK) and Basalt Film (Netherlands). Inland Films also handle international sales.