Love, Dublin style

>> Joyce and Barnacle tryst in Nora

by JOANNE LATIMER

Do we need another film about the love life of a dead literary icon? Yes, if it's about James Joyce and his muse, the beautiful Nora Barnacle. If ever a pair of lovers needed an intervention, it was "Jim," as they call him in the film, and Nora. Their passion was immense, matched only by their will to implode. Watching emotional cruelty between lovers always makes me wince and Pat Murphy's film, titled simply Nora, is a spellbinding wincer.

Filmed in the damp corners of Dublin, set in 1904, Murphy traces the trajectory of a love story between a struggling writer and a chambermaid. She's out of her league, according to the class consciousness of the time, and he's out of his mind with lust. Against the advice of his friends, Joyce (Ewan McGregor) runs off to Trieste with Nora (Susan Lynch from Waking Ned Devine) and begins life as an ex-pat.

Nora, a steadfast country girl from Galway, has no time for Joyce's unfounded fears--including a terror of cows, his mother's ghost, thunder and lightning. He's a handful, to put it mildly, and soon Joyce is playing mind games that chip away at their trust. When Joyce gets paranoid about his talent as a writer, he takes it out on Nora, throwing her past in her face and calling her down for being a slut. And he's twisted enough to stir up trouble with Nora to cull more writing material.

Murphy keeps the story trained tightly on Nora and Jim's love, with little reference to Joyce's career and their surroundings. It's a classic desert-island relationship, filmed as such. The Joyces have two children and they become increasingly more affluent, but the routines of their daily life are beside the point. Murphy ignores the mundane, focusing on the vitriolic meltdown of Joyce's jealousy and restlessness. In a moment of bittersweet triumph, Nora recites some of Joyce's work from memory after he accuses her of being ignorant and showing no interest in his new stories. The role of muse is a hard one, we learn, and managing your genius lover isn't a very glamorous vocation.

This film should cure anyone of the urge to romanticize life with a famous writer. McGregor, so good as a charming scoundrel, does Joyce proud as he vacillates between torment and tenderness. Lynch, as Nora, gives it right back. Observing her big watery eyes is like an education in suffering, and Joyce would've found that to his liking.

Nora opens Friday, June 29