“Irina Palm” (2007)

“Irina Palm” is not a film about gypsy fortune telling.  The type of palmistry practised by its protagonist is more that usually associated with every school boy’s favourite family, Mrs Palmer and her five daughters.  Marianne Faithfull plays Maggie, a middle aged British woman who desperately needs to raise money in order to send her ailing grandchild to Australia for potentially life saving treatment.  Having already sold her house to pay for earlier medical expenses, and being devoid of skills or experience to find more conventional employment, she takes a job as a sex worker, one that specialises in manually stimulating unseen clients.

The premise might sound outrageously unlikely or seedily disgusting depending on one’s taste or personal morality but as directed by the Austrian born Belgium Sam Garbarski the end result is neither pornography nor farce.  Garbarski delivers an at times poignant melodrama and character study, one that stops short of black comedy but never loses sight of the humorous side of the scenario, with particularly effective use of a term that American audiences know only as Peg Bundy’s maiden name.  Maggie’s voyage of self discovery, transforming from a frumpy widow into ‘Irina Palm’, mistress of masturbation, sees her credibly cast off the repressions of her age and class and confront the sexual hypocrisies of British society.

For Marianne Faithfull the film is a breakthrough.  Her talent obscured for years by the shadow of the Rolling Stones and the drug addiction that took hold after her split from Mick Jagger, “Irina Palm” rehabilitates and legitimises Faithfull’s acting career in the same way that “Broken English” gave her a post-Jagger musical identity.  She is at pains to point out on the DVD extras that she trained as an actress before she became famous and it shows.  Maggie’s back story of being trapped in a middle class, unhappy marriage could not be further removed from Faithfull’s own, yet she is completely convincing as the slow walking, self-effacing ‘wanking widow’.

Equally effective is Miki Manojlovic as Maggie’s brothel keeping boss.  Like Faithful, Manojlovic conveys an awful lot about his character physically, without recourse to dialogue.  Scenes between the two have a quiet, almost ironic chemistry, an irony entirely appropriate to the blossoming of mature love in a strip club.  They contrast with sequences in which Maggie takes tea with her superficial, back biting friends, women who talk a lot but say very little and mean even less.

If “Irina Palm” has a weakness it is in the presentation of Maggie’s family.  The relationship with her son and daughter in law is sketchy and underwritten.  Kevin Bishop isn’t a good enough actor to overcome some marginal lines and the histrionic scenes involving his character trying to reconcile himself to his mother’s new profession do not ring as true as the balance of the film.

In the wider scheme of things this doesn’t really matter.  Nor does the rather one note, deliberately repetitive musical score, or a loose end subplot involving the woman who does too good a job teaching Maggie the ropes.  For the most part “Irina Palm” is an original, surprisingly upbeat experience, refreshing in its honesty and lack of moralising.