Herself
I want to build a house
Sandra
Summary:
After being assaulted by her husband, Sandra takes her daughters Molly and Emma and moves out on her own. As they are living in a hotel, Sandra works two jobs to try and find them a home. While looking for places on the internet Sandra comes across a cheaper alternative of building her own house. Sandra’s only problem is finding the land to build on but luckily an older woman who she cleans for offers to let her use some space on her property to build her house. With plans in place and a plot of land to build on, Sandra sets out to build a home for her and her girls.
Characters:
Sandra is a strong-willed woman who has gone through a lot. Struggling to make ends meet, she does all she can to provide for and protect her children. Gary is Sandra’s estranged husband, as well as her abuser. He is sly and cunning, willing to do almost anything to maintain full control over his wife and children. Their two children, Molly and Emma, are both sweet children who love their mother. They are more mature than they would like to let on, due to the family trauma they have endured.
Austin: 8.7/10
Herself is an emotional drama that focuses on Molly’s life after escaping her abusive husband. The events of this movie are fictional, but they feel very real. Whether you associate that with good acting or the writing, both are strong in this movie. We see character development in a positive direction for Sandra, and we see Gary go in the opposite direction. This creates a much bigger gap between Sandra and Gary, causing conflict but also allowing Sandra to spread her wings. Although the movie is rooted in negative emotions, we get a feeling of hope that sticks around for the whole movie. Herself has a strong contrast between negative and positive emotions, as well as a few funny moments. This continual tone change allows you to catch your breath and release some of the pressure from the emotionally charged moments. I enjoyed that, and it sets itself apart from the last few drama movies we have seen.
The flow of the plot also helps develop the themes shown in this movie. It uses the emotional moments to push the plot forward, instead of relying on them to hold the plot together. It’s great to see a movie that truly has a plot, not just a bunch of emotional scenes in order and called a movie, cough cough, DNA….
Regardless of whether you are a big drama fan or not, this movie brings something to the table for you. It has feel-good moments, as well as strong emotional scenes. The characters are people you can root for, as well as people you can detest. The ending is shocking and unpredictable, but it fittingly closes the movie. I wouldn’t get Prime video for this move alone but if you already have it, it might be worth your time to check out.
Nathanyal: 8.5/10
Herself is another emotional ride, similar to DNA and Pieces of a Woman. For this story, we follow the journey of a woman as she leaves the house of her abusive husband while trying to provide a new home for her two daughters. Contrary to the other two movies, I enjoyed this one a lot more. The pacing of the plot was consistent and flowed naturally, the characters were interesting and fun to watch, and the resolution to the movie was satisfying. This movie also portrayed a good amount of realism. The husband, although a despicable character does seem realistic enough, as his actions seemed natural for the situation.
The only main downside of this movie was that some of the side characters were not too developed. Although, that aspect can be ignored, as this movie was more about Sandra and her tribulations.
Overall, this movie was enjoyable to watch. There weren’t many instances where the plot felt too slow and everything had a natural progression. I would definitely recommend giving this one a watch.
Sebastian: 8.3/10
To start, when I began this film, I did not realize that it took place in Dublin and the fact that the film is set in a European country automatically gives the film some brownie points. All jokes aside this is a really good film with some real heart and some great characters. For those frequent readers of our reviews, we just reviewed another drama Pieces of a Woman which also dealt with some dark emotional issues but I felt that this film did it better partially due to a few more moments of levity throughout. I thought that the characters were well acted with everyone giving a good performance and I would like to give a special shout out to the child actors who matched up great with their adult counterparts. The story of the film was quite interesting as well with part of it dealing with the abusive relationship and the issues of custody but what I really enjoyed was how Sandra found a way to build her own home and how she tried to make a better life for her and her kids. The emotional distress that comes from an abusive relationship is shown very effectively here through flashbacks in a PTSD sort of manner where Sandra begins to have anxiety attacks after encounters with her ex-husband Gary. This movie also sometimes has the feeling of an uplifting tale which really helps balance the sad and the happy. You really root for the characters in this movie and want to see Sandra move past her trauma and make a better life for her daughters.
All in all, this is a good movie that has some dark moments but really shines in its uplifting scenes with some well-acted characters who are easy to root for. I would recommend this to anyone who has Amazon Prime and is looking for this type of film.
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