AllMovie

Mary McGuckian wrote and directed this "Romeo and Juliet"-style story set in Northern Ireland after the 1994 cease fire. Young Hazel Stokes (Samantha Morton) is very much a part of her family's austere, rural Protestant way of life, and her family, despite the cease-fire, feels betrayed by the British. Her neighbor, Old Man Jacobs (Richard Harris) befriends Hazel and convinces her parents to let her go out more often. When Hazel and Jacobs attend a Belfast agricultural show, she meets young Catholic Malachy McAliskey (Ross McDade), and a doomed affair develops during clandestine meetings. Malachy's older brother Padhar (John Lynch) approves of the romance, but his unit leader in the militant underground, Rohan (Gabriel Byrne) is concerned over Malachy's lack of "allegiance to the cause." At the same time, Hazel's brother Jef (Marc O'Shea) spies on Hazel and informs her mother (Dearbhla Molloy). Eventually, the innocent couple is surrounded by violence. Music by the Waterboys, Mike Scott, and Brian Kennedy. Shown at the 1997 London Film Festival.