So I watched this a couple days ago and I'm not really sure what the point of making this movie was. The character didn't really grow and/or change. I was quite excited to see this show because hey it's practically an all star cast right? but it was a waste of my time. As far as acting goes, it was good. As far as scenery goes, it was good. As far as everything else goes, it was good. But there wasn't much of a storyline. A girl plays with an officer, then goes for a bad boy rebel dude, and she ends up being the cause of one of their deaths. Then she ends up leaving with a new friend at the end of the show. She leaves a trail of problems behind her.

The story is convoluted. But the strength (and the JOY) of this film is the manner in which it has so genuinely captured an era and a place, the Ireland of 1920. The camera work is unique. It came as no surprise to see that the director is a woman. Deborah Warner brings a soft and compassionate understanding to her subject which would be beyond a male. Her framing, her angles, her pacing are all perfection. She gets everything out of her actors. Maggie Smith never has been better. This is a fine and memorable film in which the story is really less important than the dream like images that support it. It's artistry.

The narrative is a mess but there are many fine visuals and isolated moments of deep emotional intensity. Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith were excellent, but Jane Birkin and Fiona Shaw have some of the most powerful scenes, with their relationship problems seeming to amplify the dislocation all the characters are feeling, Irish but not Irish, English but not English. However, it is Keely Hawes' intense performance as Lois that held the movie together for me, with her coming of age, and the relationship choices she must make, personalizing the larger conflict between English and Irish that the film wants to illuminate.This is director Deborah Warner's first film (she's an experienced stage director) and I feel she relied too much on her cinematographer, Slavomir Idziak. He did a very fine job with the landscapes and interiors, but there are too many gratuitous camera tricks and heavy-handed visual cues that don't contribute anything to the story or it's impact. Overall, worth seeing for the performances and questions of national identity it raises. The interviews with Fiona Shaw and Deborah Warner on the DVD are also worth a look.

This movie reminded me of Howard's End. Though Howard's End was much easier to follow, and there were beautiful scenes, it was very boring. In Late September, it was very hard to tell who was related to who and the plot was unrecognizable through the first half of the movie where we suffer through the prattle of supposed problems of the rich. The last half of the movie was more interesting but the ending just trailed off. Some sexuality, one brief, partial nude scene. From 1-10, I rank it as a 3.