4 hours ago
10
The visceral one-woman play Iphigenia in Splott by Welsh dramatist Gary Owen has overwhelmed audiences and critics since it premiered in 2015, reimagining the sacrificial heroine Iphigenia from Greek tragedy as a young working-class woman in Cardiff who likes a drink and a laugh, defiant in the face of pity, condescension and curtain-twitching. Now it has been recreated as a blistering Welsh-language movie by director Marc Evans, who has co-written the screenplay with Owen, with a live-wire performance from Leisa Gwenllian as Effi, a child of austerity and the Covid lockdown, reclaiming her rights to immediate pleasure and happiness in the face of long-term deprivation.
At times it plays a little broad with the occasional touch of Holby City; and on a factual point, if Effi’s solicitor wanted to dissuade her from abandoning her lucrative negligence case against a hospital, he would emphasise that her payout would come from the hospital’s insurance (though, yes, the resulting increased premiums would punish future patients). Still, Effi o Blaenau is part of a British social realist tradition that extends from Ken Loach’s Poor Cow to Clio Barnard’s The Arbor, and it turns on that kitchen-sink staple no longer often found in modern drama and movies: the unplanned pregnancy. It also has what social realism often doesn’t have: an absorbing, propulsive story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. And it’s a film that doesn’t flinch from the burden of tragedy.
Gwenllian’s Effi has been abandoned by her mum and gets on badly with her grandmother; she likes clubbing, posting sexy images online – though it isn’t clear if monetisation is a possibility – and getting wasted with her mate Leanne (Nel Rhys Lewis). There is also the somewhat sad figure of Kev (Owen Alun) with whom she has a bleary friends-with-benefits relationship, but who might be poignantly in love with her. It’s a life she pays for by being hungover for around 60% of her waking life. On a night out, Effi notices a handsome guy called Lee (Tom Rhys Harries), and thinks he might be the one, but their unexpected encounter sets in train a gruelling and heartbreaking sequence of events.
It is a tremendous performance from Gwenllian as Effi, pursuing what appears to be the dissolute life of irresponsible adulthood and yet, when finally and inevitably coming into contact with authority figures from whom she needs help – her grandmother, a hospital nurse, a disapproving but yet kindly neighbour – Effi regresses to a desperately childlike state. She is infantilised by her own choices, yes, but also the grim way in which society has forced the choices on her. Interestingly, the male patriarchal power figures from Euripides’ play, such as Agamemnon and Achilles, are largely replaced by women; these are the people who hold sway over Effi. It’s an absorbing and affecting drama.
Effi o Blaenau screened at the Glasgow film festival.
