Review of Irina Palm

Irina Palm (2007)
7/10
Not without merit, but slow
15 July 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Marianne Faithful plays middle-aged widow Maggie, who takes a job masturbating men anonymously through a hole in the wall in order to raise money to pay for a life-saving operation for her grandson. This has consequences, both good (the money, the sense of self-worth and empowerment Maggie gains, the possibility of a relationship with the proprietor of the sex shop), and bad (her son finding out, secrecy, another worker losing her job because Maggie is better at it).

Let me say that Marianne Faithful, in a subtle and understated performance, is very good indeed. The story is a good one and carries both incident and emotion.

My sole reservation - and it is a big one - is that the film is quite slow, particularly at the start. Maggie's "training" sequence, for instance, takes forever and continues way beyond the stage where it has made its point, and it is not the only sequence to be excessively leisurely.
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