{"id":200193,"date":"2025-10-09T11:05:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T11:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/200193\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T11:05:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T11:05:12","slug":"daring-and-provocative-search-for-a-missing-mother-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/200193\/","title":{"rendered":"Daring and provocative search for a missing mother \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Want in Her <\/p>\n<p>\ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 <\/p>\n<p>Director: Myrid Carten <\/p>\n<p>Cert: 15A<\/p>\n<p>Genre: Documentary<\/p>\n<p>Starring: Myrid Carten, Nuala<\/p>\n<p>Running Time: 1 hr 21 mins<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">In her fascinating hybrid documentary feature, the Irish film-maker and visual artist Myrid Carten returns to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/\">Ireland<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/london\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/london\">London<\/a> to search for her missing mother and turn the camera on her own fractured family history. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">What begins with the harrowing image of Carten\u2019s mother, Nuala, unconscious on a bench in Belfast with a bottle to hand, grows into a reckoning with intergenerational trauma.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Carten has previously mined her upbringing in gallery and multimedia work, but A Want in Her fuses her art practice with film in a formally daring, emotionally provocative piece. The narrative is fragmented, emerging through footage from different eras, and amplifying the cyclical nature of addiction and relapse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Home videos, dramatic re-enactments and phone calls telegraph a family in distress. Images of decay \u2013 water droplets distorting the lens, mould leeching on to net curtains \u2013 suggest a home that is anything but homely.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Despite the devastation, A Want in Her is underscored with affection and black humour. Nuala is presented not as a caricature of dysfunction but as a woman poised between sharp intellect, former achievements and hell-bent self-destruction. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/film\/review\/2025\/10\/08\/i-swear-review-robert-aramayos-new-film-had-hardened-critics-sobbing-like-infants\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">I Swear review: Robert Aramayo\u2019s new film had hardened critics sobbing like infantsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In lucid moments she reflects on her breakdowns and absences; in other sections she disappears entirely. Her brothers \u2013 one living in a crumbling mobile home, the other a worn-out caretaker \u2013 offer insight into the fallout.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Carten\u2019s project is not without its ethical provocations. A Want in Her invites serious reflection on the power dynamics of documentary film-making, especially when the director is also a family member. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Nuala at times objects to the camera. Questions abound: how much agency does a subject like Nuala \u2013 at times homeless, at other times incoherent or institutionalised \u2013 have in the act of being filmed? Does the camera offer her an outlet or merely a frame?<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Carten, to her credit, is acutely aware of this tension. She grapples on-screen with the guilt of recording as she crafts a personal, radical chronicle of addiction, mental illness and the blurred lines between duty and survival.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In cinemas from Friday, October 10th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Want in Her \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 Director: Myrid Carten Cert: 15A Genre: Documentary Starring: Myrid&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,41144,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-200193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-for-you","12":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}