February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The film continues to reap critical acclaim at festivals and in the international press, having already won the Golden Bear in Berlin Film Festival and the Audience Award at Sundance earlier this year.
Sheridan’s latest offering as director, his first since “The Boxer” in 1997, is “In America”, a somewhat autobiographical drama that takes as its point of departure Sheridan’s time spent with his young family in New York in the 1980s. The film tells the story of an Irish family that emigrates from Dublin to New York, following the death of one of their children. The parents and their surviving kids struggle to make ends meet in the difficult circumstances they find there. The story is told from the point of view of 10-year-old Christie (Sarah Bolger), giving the film a sense of wonder that hearkens back to the magic realist qualities of Sheridan’s screenplay for “Into the West” 10 years ago.
Sheridan co-wrote the “In America” script with his daughter Kirsten, a young child during her family’s stateside stint, but now a filmmaker in her own right. The film was warmly received at the Toronto Film Festival, and the audience gave a standing ovation to child actors and real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger, who play the surviving siblings. Samantha Morton, acclaimed for her performance in “Minority Report”, also impressed.
The advance word on the film finds Sheridan in top storytelling form, eliciting great performances from good actors to counterbalance his tendency toward excessive sentimentality. The film should be of particular interest to New Yorkers who remember Sheridan’s work in New York’s Irish theater scene almost 20 years ago. “In America” is slated for a limited U.S. release on Nov. 29.