Year:2023

Runtime: 90 minutes

Written and directed by: Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy

Starring: Imogen Poots, Tom Vaughn-Lawlor, Lewis Brophy, Jack Meade

By Sarah Manvel

Imogen Poots is an under-the-radar movie star. She has consistently had dynamic, interesting leading roles in small and unusual films which rarely match the quality she brings to them. She is one of the most fearless actors currently working, making the excellent and brave choices that got someone called an ‘indie darling’ in the nineties. Now, well, it gets you credibility but not enough attention and not nearly enough love. But it’s thanks to Ms Poots’ exceptionalism that “Baltimore” is as strong as it is. The based-on-a-true-story tale of how a woman masterminded a crime that was both a terrorist atrocity and one of the world’s greatest art thefts would have been fascinating even if the world wasn’t suddenly in its depressing current moment (and it’s pretty interesting that the London Film Festival, which is not always very supportive of Irish film, decided to screen it). But Ms Poots’ performance makes clear the limits of what one person can do, one way or another.

Its biggest misstep is the dull and misleading title. Here Baltimore doesn’t refer to the American city but instead the small Irish town where Rose Dugdale (Ms Poots) has her final reckoning. She is a wealthy British member of the landed gentry, horrified by the politics of the upper class unto which she was born and perfectly willing, in the seventies style, to throw herself (and her money) into a cause. In Rose’s case the cause becomes The Troubles, the catch-all term for the situation in Northern Ireland in which, broadly speaking, the Protestant/British (Unionist) part of the population received preferential treatment to the Catholic/Irish (Republican) part for decades. When the Republicans took inspiration from the American civil rights movement and began to protest, the crackdown was swift and merciless, the retaliation was violent and more merciless, and the situation soon devolved into a complicated stew of competing terrorist organisations, state-sanctioned violence, and thousands dead over thirty years. But long story short, in the early seventies Rose chooses to become part of the Republican cause, during which time a pair of terrorist Republican sisters ended up in prison. So Rose decides to steal a bunch of paintings from a country estate belonging to a very wealthy family to hold in exchange for them. 

The raid, which Rose leads with three men under her, Dominic (Tom Vaughn-Lawlor), Martin (Lewis Brophy) and her boyfriend Eddie (Jack Meade) is intercut with its aftermath, as Rose waits in a safe house with the paintings, including a Rubens and a Picasso. Only Rose has a formal education in art, but her crew aren’t immune to the emotional impact of the paintings, and there are gentle scenes of them discussing how the paintings make them feel intercut with sequences of them beating and terrorising the homeowners and their staff. Tom Comerford’s cinematography and John Hand’s production design combine for an autumnal-corduroy feel of the crisp fall days that also doesn’t blink at the ever-present threat which Rose and her team present, to each other as well as to everyone around them. You can feel the chill in the air. 

Writer-director-editors (and married couple) Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy, whose work tends to play with violence, grief and identity, are interested here in how art makes life worth living, even as a person tips from political activity into casual violence. The low budget means things tend towards nerve-shredding tension instead of gore, but it works; with no reason to look away the actors get to embody the violence instead of being upstaged by it. Rose is somewhat insufferable, very smug and not always willing to admit her mistakes, but she’s also smarter and braver than her crew, who fully respect that. They are also bemused by her; all the men have northern accents and were clearly born into choosing a side, and they can’t quite figure out why Rose was so delighted to throw away her privileges in order to join them. Rose doesn’t really know herself, only that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t. Ms Poots’ performance shows the thought process behind every choice Rose makes. It’s a bold and unusual performance in a bold and unusual movie.