The situation in Northern Ireland is pointed up none too undramatically: a Catholic youth, reluctantly drawn into terrorist activities, develops a yen for the Catholic widow of a Protestant policeman he himself had a hand in murdering. The very tentatively unfolding romance is your basic regimen of lending a hand with the groceries, gazing at the back of the head in church, peering through library shelves, eventually wangling a job as handyman at the farm where the désirée lives with her husband's parents (and where, further to point up the situation, a milk snack is served to the boy in a glass decorated with the Union Jack, in a kitchen outfitted with a Queen Elizabeth sugar tin and a Charles-and-Diana wall calendar). At such close range, pursuit of the relationship steps up to him sneaking into her bedroom and embracing her pillow, and finally to actual sexual contact, with him reviewing in flashback the full details, previously glimpsed only in incoherent fragments, of the policeman's murder. This particular stream of consciousness apparently does not interfere with sexual function. But those unwholesome comrades of his, who keep wanting to lure him into hushed conferences beneath a damp stone bridge, will just not leave him in peace. Never mind his duties as an Irishman, what about his duties as a metaphor? With John Lynch, Helen Mirren, Donal McCann; directed by Pat O'Connor. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd