Video & On Demand - Rose Plays Julie (online, Blu. DVD)

★★★★
"This deceptively slick psychological drama...
"Feels likes a ghostly horror-tinged companion piece to 2008's brilliant 'Helen.'
'There's a strong element of Greek tragedy underpinning Rose Plays Julie...the domestic monsters of this story may have a #MeToo era edge, but the underlying themes of what the film makers call "identity under duress" are ancient and timeless."
Mark Kermode, THE OBSERVER


★★★★
"Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor are two of the most consistenly interesting film-makers working today.  Their new project is their best film yet.  So a thriller? Absolutely - taut and gripping, wiht shades of the great Claude Chabrol.  But a morality tale too."
Danny Leigh, THE FINANCIAL TIMES


★★★★
“This uncanny and transgressive film about a young woman who tracks down her birth parents is Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s best work yet...grabs you by the throat...an edge-of-the-seat thriller.  It is a really powerful film and Brady's final dialogue scene exerts a lethal grip."
Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN


★★★★
"The delicious slow-build tension from the co-directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor is created via dark themes (Rose is studying "euthanasia on healthy animals"), heavy interior shadows, sinister tracking shots, choral music and ominous orchestral brass (hints of Stanley Kubrick)."
Kevin Maher, THE TIMES

★★★★★
“A knockout film...Its emotional dilemmas, depictions of trauma, revenge and fractured family ties are handled with such skill and sense of purpose, it is truly exemplary film-making.”
Martyn Conterio, CINEVUE

"An extraordinary ethical thriller...One of the richest, weirdest, most provocative films I've seen in a long time...Unmissable."
David Jenkins, LITTLE WHITE LIES

★★★★
"In Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor's third feature, revenge is served very cold...Rose (Ann Skelly; The Nevers) is adopted. There's a frozen, almost trance-like quality to Rose's affect as she sets out to find her biological parents...Her biological mother, Ellen (a wonderful Orla Brady; A Girl from Mogadishu; Collateral) wants no contat with this daughter...
Markie, Robson- Scott, THE ARTS DESK


"Desperate Optimists’ potent new film poses ethical dilemmas and undercuts Eurowestern narrative traditions with every twist of the plot and shift in tone...A mythic thriller."
So Mayer, SIGHT & SOUND


★★★★
"Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, aka Desperate Optimists (Helen, Mister John), are masters at generating unease and do so in spades with their latest psycho-thriller, a formally austere suspenser with a foreboding Stephen McKeon score."
Neil Smith, EMPIRE


"It's many moments of quiet and silence also lend any words spoken even more weight while lingering shots set alongside a twinkling Exorcist-style soundtrack with the occasional operatic trill leave you constantly on edge.
Leonie Cooper, NME


"The most disturbing thing about the impresively distrubing Rose Plays Julie may just be how satisfying it is."
Jessica Kiang, VARIETY

"A deeply aware film, Rose Plays Julie allows for the fantastic as a means and space of catharsis."
Sarah-Tai Black, LA TIMES

★★★★
"This is hypnotic, thrilling, deeply confident filmmaking."
Jamie Dunn, THE SKINNY


"The tale...taps into primal urges - for love, revenge, knowledge - and these urges give Rose Plays Julie a mythic quality, like a story told since antiquity, or a fable designed to express truths about the human condition. Very controlled in its style: this control reaps huge rewards."
Sheila O'Malley, ROGER.EBERT.COM

"Rose Plays Julie is an emotionally cathartic thriller...It's subtle until it's not, and then it grabs you.  I enjoyed it very much."
Lorry Kikta, FILM THREAT

"Film of the Week (63rd BFI LFF) "A powerful new Irish Film. Ann Skelly is magnificently perplexing as Rose/Julie."
Jonathan Romney, FILM COMMENT


“One of the best screen depictions of the internal struggle of being adopted, perfectly realising a character's permanent sense of existential displacement... I was absolutely floored by this film."
Alistair Ryder, FILM INQUIRY

“Layering its story of an adopted Irish girl who tracks down her birth mother with immersive visual and aural motifs, it plays more like modern operatic tragedy...Stark, meditative and bracingly uncompromising”
Nikki Baughan, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL