Ann Lovett would be 55 now. This film about her awful death is a brave, at times daring tribute

Nobody can fault Ciaran Creagh’s bravery in mounting a dramatised take on the awful demise of Ann Lovett. In 1984, the schoolgirl bled to death after giving birth before a grotto in the Co Longford town of Granard. No filmmaker would dare invent a location with such symbolic weight. The tragedy occurring within months of the referendum to facilitate the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited abortion in almost all circumstances, might also seem narratively convenient. That background, however, helped firm up a defining legend – one that happened to be true – in the long march towards liberalisation.

Creagh, director of the troubling In View, has brought not a whiff of sensationalism to the story. His withdrawn, cool approach bears comparison with Gus Van Sant’s oblique treatment of the Columbine High School massacre in Elephant (and thus boasts more remote affiliation with Alan Clarke’s take on the Northern Irish conflict in his earlier film of the same name). Creagh and his cinematographer, Dave Grennan, rewatched László Nemes’s Auschwitz drama Son of Saul to prepare themselves for a walk behind their own protagonist towards a different oblivion.

Ann is not wholly successful. It aspires to a visual poetry that is forever just out of reach. The initial purity of its approach breaks down as tragedy overtakes quotidian mundanity. But this is an undeniably sincere and considered effort to pay homage to a generation of misused women and girls.

[ I was Ann Lovett’s boyfriend ]

Much credit must go to the Tyrone actor Zara Devlin, who, working with little dialogue, brings conflicting vulnerability and determination to the lead character. The film follows Ann over a single day as she makes her way about the small town on what ultimately becomes a stagger towards a despairing end. She leaves a note for her family. She collects a pair of scissors. Reminding us that the smartphone age is still a generation away in the future, she takes a page from a biology textbook as her guide to female anatomy. Though now into her 20s, Devlin captures the blind confusion perfectly.

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For all its flaws, Ann stands as an honourable tribute to those who failed to escape the clawing theocratic gravity

Initially the film works as cinematic daisy chain. The camera follows one character and then takes off with the next one met in hugely long takes that give us some sense of the town’s intimate geography. Understandably, Creagh does not shoot in Granard – “It would be very disrespectful,” he told The Irish Times – and instead takes his camera west, to Boyle. That town is, however, small enough to remind us quite how difficult it would be to escape the familiar when burdened with anxiety. The combination of visual quaintness and unhelpful reticence seems just right for that place and that time.

[ Ciaran Creagh on re-creating Ann Lovett’s last day: ‘This is one story that hasn’t been faced up to’ ]

A strong cast bring colour to often sketchily drawn, sometimes archetypal locals. The always rumble-voiced Frank O’Sullivan is a retired guard. The versatile Philip Judge is the inevitable priest. Seán T Ó Meallaigh eventually imposes awful reality as the doctor. The standout supporting performance – not for the first time – comes from Eileen Walsh as Ann’s mother. Creagh’s own script is cautious not to speculate about still-unsolved mysteries, but Walsh, playing opposite Ian Beattie as the girl’s father, conceals volumes of suspicions and fears in a library of facial furrows.

As events slump forward, the discipline slides and the film takes on the quality of something a little more conventional. The close is still respectful, but it doesn’t have the quiet daring of those opening perambulations. We are, nonetheless, left processing the grim truth that, during a decade proud of its own futuristic cultural aspirations, corners of Ireland were still floundering in the dark ages. For all its flaws, Ann stands as an honourable tribute to those who failed to escape the clawing theocratic gravity. Had she lived she would now be 55 years old.

Ann is released on Friday, April 28th